


The Shape of You

by TheQueen



Series: There is No Sex Ed in Space [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming of Age, Family Bonding, Friendsheith, Gay Keith (Voltron), Happy Ending, Keith (Voltron) does his best, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Major Character Injury, Masturbation, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, Stream of Consciousness, Team as Family, There is no Sex Ed in Space, Underage Drinking, and having emotions, honestly this fic is just, keith bonding with the team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-09-25 06:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 40,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9806594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: The AU where Lance was actually Keith’s gay awakening and he doesn’t realize it until he sees Lance in that skin tight underarmor and proceeds, without delay, to walk directly into a wall.Starring Pining Keith, Oblivious Lance, Best Wingman Hunk, and Big Brother Shiro.





	1. Chapter 1

It kind of sort of starts like this.

Maybe.

(Okay that’s a lie. But when asked he’ll say:)

“It starts when they’re coming back (home?) from a long mission and no one really wants to be moving, but they’re all gross. Covered in some form of alien body fluid that Pidge insists isn’t toxic despite the fact that it smells like death and looks mildly radioactive. The sort of radioactive you see in old 20th century cartoons that some of his foster parents used to play on repeat for movie night: vivid green and goopy.

His thoughts stray and he wonders if he could convince Shiro to convince Allura that movie nights would be a good form of team bonding. It would probably beat the latest round of gladiator insanity she’d been pushing them through. He’s sure Lance and the others would appreciate it.

(He enjoys training. Is the sort of person who needed to be exhausted to sleep, but even he has his limits.)

So this is the part where they separate. Each one goes off to clean up and lick their wounds until they’re all emotionally stable enough to enjoy each other’s company. Because while they had become close after the separation and desperate struggle to find each other due to the sorta-successful rescue mission and the following three months of kicking Galra ass, they have yet to get close enough for it to get weird.

That would come later. Apparently the past paladins had been in a five-way orgy as far as Keith could figure out from Allura and Lance’s stuttering (and he didn’t even want to think about how Zarkon fit in that equation). Which, cool. Not Keith’s thing what with Pidge being a girl, Shiro being his brother in all but blood, and Lance and Hunk being straight. But Keith had pretty much accepted the fact that living with the same seven people and four weirdly intelligent pastel space rodents for potentially the rest of his life (no matter how short that life might be) was going to make things weird.

Except this time, they didn’t. Which, ya know, leave it to Lance to make things weird early. Because this time, Lance turns to Hunk who has gotten the worst of it with his tendency to act as a human meat shield (and what is with both of their support players having suicidal tendencies when it came to protecting the rest of the team. Lance is a sniper for Christ’s sake and he still ends up injured more often than not saving someone!) and starts helping the other man pry off his armor before casually starting to shuck his off.

Blinking twice (it is a struggle for Keith to rip his eyes away from Hunk’s arms cause wow… He wonders if Hunk could bench press him?) Keith turns to Lance and frowns. “What are you doing?”

Lance scoffs, runs his hands through his hair in an attempt to dislodge some of the goop. “I’m pretty sure this shit is hardening and it’s hard enough to take off these suits to begin with.”

Keith turns to Shiro who, in all his leadership expertise, take the easy route and shrugs before working off his arm bracers. Soon everyone is discarding their uniforms until there is enough pressure for even Keith to admit that Lance is probably right. His chest is starting to itch anyway.

It is after he manages to work his breast plate off -- with some of Shiro’s help because the goop has hardened around the clasps at his side and he can’t get his arms to twist in just the right way to reach them -- that Keith looks up and thinks… _oh no_. Because in front of him is Lance. A very naked, shirtless Lance. With abs. Abs that Keith is familiar with. Very familiar. Familiar in the sense that he had stared at them and thought about them for potentially a little too long. And there is even that stupid little freckle and…. _oh god_.  He lets his eyes wander up to remind himself that those abs are very much connected to Lance.

Who has yet to see Keith staring, too busy wiggling eyebrows at Hunk, and Keith thinks, _I have to leave_.

Because _oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no._

And maybe his desperate attempt to scramble out of the room on his exhausted, jello-y legs leads to him smacking his face against a nearby wall. Well… that’s the least humiliating thing about this situation.

...

Lance turns to Shiro with raised eyebrows after they all watch Keith drunkenly run out of the room like his life and the universe depended on it.

Shiro stares back, looks down and then up, and then--much to Lance’s growing confusion and embarrassment because _did Shiro just checked him out?!_ —smiles. No… smirks?

...

Keith had not been born knowing he was gay. He had not exuded any of the early signs. Never play-flirted with other boys. Never had any too close boy “friends.” Never imagined himself getting married to a boy. Either through stunted emotional growth he’d been told came from being shuffled from one foster home to the next (some better than others) or simply because he had never really… ya know, liked people, Keith had never thought about dating or sex or sexuality. He’d only ever gone with it. In the same way he never really tried to make friends or hang out, Keith never asked people on dates. If a girl or a boy wanted to go out with him, he said yes because it was easier than saying no. It helped that there was never a second date.

And as for sexual attraction, he’d felt it. Known in that abstract sort of way that sex sounded nice and he’d liked to have it one day. Yet when he masturbated (because he was a teenager and he was not as uptight as Lance seemed to think) he never really saw someone. Just feelings and hands and ideas of what one did in that sort of situation.

So the first time he was truly and dearly attracted to someone, it had been more than left field. It had crash landed from outer space and left a crater of confusion and maybe this metaphor was falling apart but it made sense. Sorta.

Because there he had been. Perfectly naïve and unconcerned with people and their relationships, content in the knowledge that he had stayed safe and above it all through middle school (and okay, looking back Keith can admit he’d been almost pretentious in that way all fifteen year olds were, not that he’d ever let Shiro know. He didn’t want to be teased into the next century.) And then it had happened while taking a shortcut through the athletics building just in time to turn his head in just the right way to see the swim team practicing for a meet and boom. There they had been. Abs.

Not just any abs. The abs. The abs that had made him actually stop walking, moving, breathing. The abs attached to that chest that were attached to those arms that made his face heat up and his heart thump way too fast in his chest. And what? _WHAT?_

It was all basically downhill from there.

.

Shiro finds him, freshly showered and huddled under his sheets, fighting the very natural reaction to scream in growing horror the longer he thinks about it. Because of course, of all the people to be stuck with in outer space for potentially the rest of his natural life and it has to be…

“So… Lance,” Shiro says, sitting down and smirking because he had no mercy. None. And how had Shiro convinced the others he is nice when he is really the spawn of Satan sent to ensure Keith could not hide from his humiliation.

Keith whines.

Shiro laughs.

Keith flips him off.

Shiro laughs harder.

“But really,” Shiro says, when he calms down, the same stupid smirk on his stupid face. “Lance? I mean… I know you guys are getting along better, but I never really thought…”

“It’s…” Keith scowls before admitting defeat and popping out of his blanket shield. “It’s not like that.”

Shiro nods. Listening.

Keith blushes. “Do you… um… well do you remember freshman year when I learned that I was gay?” Shiro’s just looking now, listening. Still smiling because Keith had been a mess and Shiro had been stupidly patient with him. For a big brother, Keith could have done a lot worse. “And do you…um….” He blushes harder. “Do you remember me telling you about the first guy I was ever… ya know… attracted to…”

Shiro makes an _oh_ shape with his mouth before his smile widens. He claps his hands together, expression one of pure sadistic glee and Keith immediately takes back that “great brother” comment. “The swimmer was…”

“Shiro…” Keith begs, not wanting to hear it.

“Was Lance,” Shiro practically croons as if he hadn’t heard Keith interrupt. “The swimmer, the first guy you were ever attracted to. The guy you mooned after for months. The guy you literally stalked the athletics building for a month trying to find. The guy you never shut up about…”

“Shiro!”

“Was Lance!!” Shiro shrieks, reaching forward and grabbing Keith’s hands in his. “You know what this means?”

“Shiro, no.”

Shiro cackles, actually honest to god cackles. “This is going to be great.”

Keith wonders if death by humiliation is a thing. Maybe he’d ask Pidge. Pidge would probably know.

.

Keith met Shiro when Shiro had been assigned his mentor. As the youngest pilot to ever graduate the Garrison at the whooping age of 18 after completing the program in only three years, Keith had taken one look at this large, smiling boy in an officer’s uniform and declared with far too much confidence, “I’ll graduate in two.”

Shiro had just smiled, raised one eyebrow and said, “I’d like to see you try.”

It hadn’t taken much for them to get close after that.

So in the aftermath of realizing one) he had felt real, vis—visceral? (is that the word?) attraction for another living, real human being and two) that human being had been a male, Keith did the only reasonable thing he could do. He made his way to Shiro’s on-campus apartment and pounded on the door until his mentor dragged himself out of bed and let him in. Keith then proceeded to take four steps into the apartment, waited until Shiro had locked the door, and then screamed. Loudly.

“What? What?! What’s happening?” Shiro panicked, grabbing Keith as if he was going in for a hug before remembering Keith wasn’t a hugger.

Keith took a big breath. “I think I got a boner.”

“…oh-kay…?” Shiro frowned, letting him go. “Well that is… completely natural. I don’t know what they taught you in Texas, but there is nothing wrong with…”

“For a guy.”

Shiro press his lips together and nodded, “Still nothing…”

“No, like…” And Keith made an annoyed sound, throws his school bag on the floor before throwing himself onto Shiro’s living room couch with the one awful cushion and tries again, “I’ve never been sexually attracted to someone before.” Keith threw his arm over his eyes and tries to find the words for why he was freaking out. Because he’d never had a problem with sex. He’d always understood that if he wanted sex he’d have to have it with, ya know, a person. Probably. “Like I know I want to but I’ve never actually thought of myself with another person before.”

Shiro made a surprised sound.

“Is that weird?” Keith asked, voice softer than he intends, moving his arm so he can look up at Shiro.

“No,” Shiro said and Keith knows he’s not lying. It might be weird but at least Shiro didn’t think so. At least there was that.

“So…” Shiro shrugged, “Are you gay? Or bi?”

Keith shot up and made a startled _oh_ sound. “I…I have no idea…”

.

The problem with swearing to avoid someone is there isn’t a lot of places to go in a flying castle in space unless you are looking for a quick death via lack of oxygen. Plus when you live with only six other people, it becomes pretty obvious when you’re trying to avoid someone. It doesn’t help that Hunk is pretty observant and a busybody.

So when Hunk seeks him out with the intentions of avoiding tension within the team, Keith quickly and happily informs him he’d rather be doing anything else than have this conversation. “No,” Keith repeats when it looks like Hunk might not understand as he takes a seat next to Keith on one of the rec room sofas, “I would literally rather be back in that swamp eating nothing but bugs and smelling like decomposing dead things and almost dying than have this conversation.”

Hunk gives Keith the Look. The Look. The patented Disappointed Mom Friend Look, as Pidge liked to call it. The Look usually reserved for Lance is now being directed at Keith and if that doesn’t imply how far and quickly Keith has fallen since making this horrifying discovery literally less than three quintants ago, nothing will. “Keith.”

And there it is. His name in that Disappointed Mom Friend Voice. And wow, Keith feels bad. How does Hunk do it? He is really good at this. How does Lance deal with it? Is he immune? Like… if you mess up enough, do you get used to the Disappointed Mom Friend stuff until you became the Disappointing Friend? Which…okay. No. That is rude. Even for Keith. Because Lance is the farthest thing from a Disappointment.

After all, Lance is and always will be the reason Keith and Shiro are still standing, breathing, and living to fight another day.

(There are times when Keith thinks about what would have happened if Lance hadn’t found them and it makes his breath stutter and the nightmares even harder to get through so he does his best not to think about it.)

“Hunk,” Keith echos, trying for a smile. Which didn’t suit him even if he’d gotten better at opening up around the others and not just Shiro.

Hunk’s face becomes impossibly kind. “Keith, what’s wrong?”

“I…” Keith blushes, unsure how to handle this. Hunk doesn’t do this with Keith, not really. If Keith needs comfort, he goes to Shiro because that’s how they work. No matter how close they get, there is always this understanding of Hunk and Lance and Pidge and then Shiro and Keith. Divided by shared history. Not that they aren’t friends, but that line is there. It makes sense. “Um… yeah. No. It’s not like that…”

Hunk hums, “Did something happen between you and Lance?”

And Keith blushes harder as he scowls. “No,” he says with far too much force before controlling himself. “No, nothing happened between me and Lance.”

Hunk hums again, far too amused. “Alright. Then you should get dressed in your Altean casuals.”

Keith frowns. “ _Why_?”

Hunk smiles, looking a little less kind and a little more smug, smugger? “You, me, and Lance are on a supply run. We’re heading to Koris.”

.

The ride in the pod is unnaturally silent. Most of it is Keith’s fault.

Most because Keith has learned from Lance to be petty enough to know better than to take all the blame even if Hunk is sending him exasperated looks every now and then like a mother looking at her two squabbling children in the backseat.

(Which they’re not. You have to be talking to be squabbling.)

Finally Keith takes the hint and clears his throat. “What exactly are we picking up?”

No one says anything and Keith feels his face heat up until he’s looking down at his scuffed paladin boots, only in half-paladin armor with a loose tunic on top to hide the bullet-proof under armor because they shouldn’t be in any serious danger, but everyone has learned to stay armed as often as possible. Koris is an alliance planet, after all. Well-defended and far enough from the main hub of the Galra empire that they’ve spent the last ten thousand years relatively free.

Lance moves, knocks his foot lightly against Keith’s in such a way that Keith can’t tell if it’s intentional or not. “We’re picking up secondary crystals.” Keith looks up just in time to see Lance shrug, all casual lines and loose limbs. His tunic is blue where Keith’s is red, color coded as always. Cut different for a wider set of shoulders and narrower hips. A sash snug around his waist where his bayard is hooked. It suits him. ( _Like everything Lance wears_ , a usually quiet part of his mind whispers.) Keith finds his eyes tracing the gold trimming from Lance’s throat down his arms before he remembers himself, looks down, blushes harder.  “Something about the particle crystal taking a beating in the last few rounds.”

Keith nods.

The silence returns.

Hunk scowls at him from his driver seat and Keith tries not to feel too bad. After all… what should he say when he can barely meet Lance’s eye?

.

Trying to figure out what you’re sexually attracted to proves to be harder than Keith expected. Not because he didn’t want to or he was scared or he didn’t have the time. It’s more… he forgot. He forgot to go looking. Forgot to turn his head when something pretty enters the room. Forgot to look up when someone smiled and bat their eyes his way or told him he looks good. Forgot that sometimes people didn’t want just to compliment his flying. Forgot to look out for innuendos and double-meanings. Forgot to watch when a hand stayed a little too long or people stood too close.

He’d spent so long ignoring it, pushing it away. Attraction. Interest. Making himself unavailable because dates were tedious and break ups nerve-racking. That now that he wanted to be interested he couldn’t… he didn’t really know what he was supposed to do.

He thought about asking Shiro. Shiro would know, right? Older. Smarter. Better with people than Keith could ever hope to be. But it was too much. Too embarrassing. Too ridiculous. What could Shiro say? How would Keith even ask? So he grit his teeth and tried to break himself of a habit that felt less like a habit and more a defining personality trait at this point.

The one thing he didn’t forget was the swimmer.

It’s embarrassing how often he found himself in the athletic building between classes. But he needed a name, a face. Something. Anything to put to that chest and those abs and those arms. But he couldn’t find him, didn’t know what to look for other than what he remembered. And it wasn’t like he could go around asking the swim team to get naked so he could stare for far too long at their abs. So soon he started to imagine.

Found himself in bed feeling a little horny and started dreaming of not just any hands, but _his_ hands. His mind wandered. It was more than anything he’d dreamed of before, but still innocent relative to the stuff he’d seen on the web. Just hands and a mouth and the idea of what that body would feel like against his own. Heat pooled in his stomach and when he moved his hands he closed his eyes tight and tried to imagine what those long fingers would feel like on his thighs and then higher. Touching him. Making him feel good.

It was so much more than what he was used to.

When he finished, he walked the walk of shame to the nearest bathroom and stepped under the spray of a lukewarm shower to cool down. He was not the only one here, but it was easy to block out everyone until his face no longer felt as flushed. It was embarrassing to admit he had never felt like that before: equal parts embarrassed and overwhelmed. It scared him to know there was so much about his own body he didn’t understand.

When he stepped out, it was to McClain chatting away with Singh and any remaining shreds of arousal flush away. “Kogane,” he greeted, deadly cheerful for--Keith looked down at his phone—1am in the morning.

Keith grunted, collected his caddy, and fell asleep without bothering to dry his hair.

.

Koris is a beautiful planet. Smaller than Earth but green. Dominated by a singular continent that spans the better half of the planet. The air has a higher density of oxygen than Earth, leaving the planet’s inhabitants with startling short life spans but a greater density of lush forests and sprawling green plains.

The capital city and main trading hubs are built into the side of an ever-green mountain: well defended by thick forests on three sides and solid stone to its back. Not that nature is its only defense. For all the natural beauty and easily accessible resources Koris has to offer, her people are no fools to war. Ten thousand years of fighting off an empire that has slowly conquered most of the known universe is enough time to build up a significant army of their own.

And its strong defense and relatively stable political system are the main reasons why most of the Free Universe’s traders find their way to its markets. It’s also why Team Voltron rarely bothers to shop elsewhere.

When they step off the pod, an ambassador greets them at the dock and asks if there is anything specific they need. Lance steps in, all charm and smiles and friendly words, reassuring the ambassador that they only need a quick browse through their markets. And so Keith finds himself falling into step with Lance in search of the correct secondary crystal as Hunk wanders off, muttering something about stocking up on a few ingredients even as he gives Keith a pointed look as if saying, _fix this_.

Which is… fair.

(Keith is afraid he is slowly becoming the Disappointing Friend.)

What makes it even worse is Lance isn’t even pretending to not be upset with him, even for the sake of the audience they’ve accumulated thanks to their armor and Altean clothing sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the more muted clothing of the majority of the crowd. So Keith is left scrambling after him, feeling even worse and guilty because he knows it’s his fault. He can only imagine what Shiro would say if he were here.

(Actually it isn’t that hard to imagine. Shiro is perfect in all the ways that count. But he has a sadistic streak a mile long that enjoyed laughing at Keith’s embarrassment. The fact that forcing Keith to talk about his feelings with Lance could be disguised as a necessary order for the good of Voltron and The Universe would have just been the icing on the top.

…

Not that Shiro would be wrong, of course. Because he’s perfect.

That asshole.)

So Keith takes a deep breath even as he scrambles to think of something, anything to say that would explain why he’s been avoiding Lance without having to give away the truth. Because Lance has done nothing wrong. Other than… ya know… existing. With his stupidly attractive face and chest and arms and…. _Focus, Keith. Please_.

 _Be still my gay thoughts._ Keith blushes, glaring down at his feet as he continues to follow Lance blindly.

The point being that Lance is aware that this is all on Keith. And Keith is aware this is all on him. So now he just needs to fix it before it gets worse because…

Because Keith is a big enough man to admit it. He misses Lance. In his time avoiding Lance, he’s missed the other boy’s jokes and teasing and their mutual bickering. It has been a spot of fun in an otherwise dull day-to-day...or quintant-to-quintant floating through the void. But he also misses the quiet moments. The talks at two am when the ship is asleep that had built the foundation of their friendship. He’s woken up on one too many nights after a nightmare only to force himself back to sleep without the catharsis of joking around with Lance with a cup of green hot chocolate. It’s a routine he’s quickly grown tired of.

“We’re looking for the yellow ones,” Lance says, finally breaking the silence as they enter the tech district. The air smells like burning wood and metal. And when Keith looks up it’s to find Lance has paused a few steps behind him. Keith turns around. “Ya know,” he says, looking around as if looking for the shop. But Keith thinks he remembers where the booth is and he’s pretty sure Lance does as well. “The little square ones.”

“Lance,” Keith starts, pressing his hands together and steeling his nerves “I’m…”

“Keith,” Lance stops him there, smiles that stupid fucking smile that has started to make his knees weak (and has been making his chest warm since he spotted it for the first time in his shack all those months ago when Lance laughed at one of Hunk’s jokes). “I don’t know what’s going on, but don’t worry about it. I know you can get stuck in your head sometimes.” He walks over and claps Keith across the shoulder, all easy gait and eyes. That same amused smile across his face. “Tell me when you’re ready, okay. But just… try not to avoid me too much?”

Keith snorts and rolls his shoulder, dislodging Lance’s hand. “Thanks. And I am sorry… for acting like a dick.”

“Can’t help what you are, Keithy-boy,” Lance teases, walking again. Steps still light and long, limbs stretching up to workout whatever kink he has in his shoulders. Forever unaware of the eyes that trail after him like moths to a light. “But it’s okay. I forgive you. As long as you buy me something pretty to make up for it.” He throws another kind smile Keith’s way, this one a little too understanding.

Keith falls into step next to Lance. “What? Fuck it. Apology recanted.”

“Suck it up, Samurai. I want something shiny.”

.

There were points in Keith’s young life that he does not remember with great fondness. Points that were, for lack of better descriptors, embarrassing. This… this was definitely one of them.

Keith had never been a fan of the porn industry. Rumors of the way women and men alike were treated by producers and directors left him feeling off whenever he saw ads for PornHub or RedTube. The knowledge that those women rarely felt as good as they pretended to feel spoiled any pleasure he might have gotten from them if he’d bothered trying.

But this was also a point in his life where his own frustrations were getting the better of him. Getting to a point where he couldn’t help but feel like a failure. What kid couldn’t figure it out? Who didn’t just know? How stupid was he for taking this long to even consider…

Shiro told him it was normal. That everyone took their own time. That he wasn’t a freak for not caring about sexual identities until it quite literally came out of normal and punched him in the face (or…the dick? Whatever. He wasn’t the best at metaphors.). But that didn’t keep him from getting annoyed whenever his mind wandered during class. Didn’t keep him from getting upset or anxious when he thought about all the things he needed to catch up on: first kisses and dates and heartbreak.

So the day his roommate told him he’s going out of town for Thanksgiving break, Keith decided enough was enough. He picked up a hand lotion that the internet said wasn’t bad for his dick from the student convenience store and dug out that last packet of tissues because that was what the internet told him he needed, typed in “porn” into the Google search bar (obviously set in an incognito window because he didn’t want Shiro finding this the next time he went snooping through his laptop) and clicked on the first link he found.

Turned out porn was a little more complicated than he thought. The sections across the header glared down at him. Their words creeped him out more than the various pictures of women in “mid orgasm”, their mouths stretched impossibly large in soundless screams as some man-ish hands pressed down on their wrists or thighs. Barely Legal? Latin? Asian? The longer he scanned the first page of the website desperately looking for something to catch his fancy, the more his stomach twisted.

But Keith Kogane was no quitter. He’d come here with a job in mind and he would see it through. He tabbed to the “Most Fapped” section and clicked the first video with an icon that didn’t sound like the woman was in severe pain and settled in.

The moment he heard the soft gasps and moans coming from his headphones, he felt his stomach sour. This…this wasn’t going to work. He paused the video and stared at the image of the large breasted woman slowly working a dildo about the width of his fist into her vagina, sighed, and then stared down at his crotch.

Clearly, he was going about this wrong. Perhaps… he couldn’t force it? All the websites suggesting porn as a way to figure out what you were into said he needed to be comfortable after all. So first he needed to get comfortable.

Climbing off the bed, he stripped down to his tank top and underwear, tossed the lotion aside and tucked the napkins underneath his pillow. He dimmed the lights and climbed onto his bed. He moved the laptop to the side, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Take two.

This time he let his mind wander, tried to focus on his breathing to work the tension out of his shoulders. It was easy to pick up where the last fantasy had left off. A mouth on his neck. Two warm hands on his waist. When he rolled his hips into his hand, he tried to not imagine any specific gender. Just a nice weight and felt that steady heat of arrival start to pool in his belly. This time when he opened the laptop to the image of the large breasted woman working a dildo into her vagina, he kept the volume low and did his best to keep that feeling going.

Except it doesn’t last long. Listening to those breathy moans and the weird sort of wet sound of the dildo was enough to kill any boner he had worked himself towards. And the results were inconclusive. He doesn’t know if it’s the vagina and the breasts that were killing his mood or the way she was obviously faking it, opening her mouth like she was trying to deep throat Jesus and shrieking for the devil. Even killing the volume didn’t help at that point, the ringing in his ears leaving him with the start of a headache and a somewhat sour mode.

Switching to gay porn and seeing two weirdly buff dudes who’d made the mistake of reminding him of some of the gym bros he’d seen only earlier that day beating each other up in bed in some surreal mimicry of foreplay didn’t help either.

.

Keith corners Hunk in the kitchen after stepping out of the shower, hair still wet and sticking uncomfortably to the place between his shoulder blades through his slightly damp shirt. Not for the first time, he wonders how he’s supposed to cut his hair in space without scissors. At least Lance has quit with the mullet jokes, instead taking to running his hands through Keith’s hair during their off vargas in the same way Keith imagines Lance would pet a shaggy dog.

“So I see you two worked it out,” Hunk says from his place at the table, typing away on the homemade laptop he and Pidge had worked on in their spare time since they’d all found each other post-wormhole.

“Thanks for that,” Keith shrugs, taking a seat. He takes a moment to glance at Hunk’s screen to see a few schematics pulled up and knows whatever Hunk is working on is bound to go over his head.

Hunk shrugs and leans away from the table to roll his shoulders and crack his back. He has probably been hunched over looking at the laptop since they’d returned, a bad habit of getting lost in his projects. “Of course, Keith. You’re my bro for life, remember.”

Keith laughs at that and the stupid corny smile Hunk has. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why Hunk and Lance tend to get on like a house on fire and ten times more destructive. But their competitive streak and poor taste in humor tended to explain that away. “Yeah well… Figured I owed you so…”

Hunk raises an eyebrow and shook his head. He mutters something under his breath that Keith doesn’t catch before pushing his laptop away and standing, stretching again to work out the last few kinks in his lower back. “All right. Then you’re helping me on kitchen duty and then we’re calling it even.” At Keith’s look of protest, because everyone knows spending kitchen duty with Hunk is very rarely a chore, Hunk throws him a Look. “No protesting, Kogane. I know how you can get.”

.

That’s how Lance finds them two vargas later: elbow deep in some flour mixture as Hunk explains the finer details of their time in the Garrison.

“Of course,” Hunk cries over the sizzle of oil as he dropped a fresh batch of latke-esque savory pancakes into the pan. “That’s when Lance decides….”

“Woah woahwoahwoahwoah woah,” Lance chants, throwing himself forward, uncaring of the stray powder that is staining the blue sleeves of his pajamas. “What’s this about Lance? Hunk…Hunk are you betraying the bro code?”

“Apparently,” Keith sings, “I’m part of the bro code now so…”

Lance squawks in protest, throwing Hunk another sharp look of betrayal that everyone knows he doesn’t mean from the way he starts giggling a few ticks later. Hunk passes him one of the fresh latkes as a peace offering. Around a mouthful of food, Lance asks, “So what genius did I partake in?”

“Oooo ‘partake,’” Keith says dryly, eyes not lifting from the dough he was steadily kneading into bread, “That’s a big word. Have you been hanging around Pidge recently?”

“Well yes, in fact I have,” Lance says. “And I can only assume you are in the same desperate need for some of our wonderful Green’s genius to rub off on you the same way it has started to rub off on me.”

“Damn it, Lance!” Pidge cries as she entered the kitchen, “How’d you know I was there?”

“Reflection in the fridge, Pigeon.” Lance looks over his shoulder to grin at her. And Keith tries not to flush when that same pleased grin is redirected at him. “Remember my dear student, you have to check the surroundings thoroughly. Put yourself in the shoes of your target to avoid giving away your vantage point.”

Pidge sighs and leans against the counter, a little more careful to avoid the flour.

“But,” Lance adds, “You have gotten a lot better. I’m sure you’ll have this down in a few more movements. And then comes the fun part!” He looks at Pidge and this time his smile is a little vicious. “Silent take downs!”

“Nice.”

Hunk clears his throat. “No training in the kitchen, guys. Or else Allura’s going to start breaking that rule again and no one needs that.”

“Sorry Hunk.” “Won’t happen again, Hunk.”

“As I was saying, Keith,” Hunk says, putting an unnecessary amount of stress on his name, “That’s when Lance decides the only way to save our collective asses is… drum roll please.” Pidge smacks a steady rhythm onto the counter. “To flirt. Of course.”

Lance frowns. “Wait. Which time are we talking about?”

“You know that doesn’t make this story any better,” Keith jokes.

Lance sticks his tongue out.

“So Professor Tobin is standing there, four shots in, and just staring at us in growing horror at the knowledge one) three of her students had seen her dressed as she was, two) had seen her knock back a row of shots like a fucking boss, and three) were not supposed to be out past curfew. The problem being she wasn’t exactly supposed to be running around a gay bar either.” Here Hunk pauses for dramatic effect as Lance and Pidge start to giggle, probably remembering the scene Hunk is painting fondly.

“So Lance comes in, guns blazing,” Pidge cuts in, raising her fingers in Lance’s signature finger guns, “And smirks and says something like… ‘Hey sweetheart, knew you had a wild side.’”

“I did not!” Lance defends as Keith starts laughing, picturing little Lance trying to flirt with a women ten times his age and clearly out of his league. “I… I mean I might have said something similar but no way that creepy. Keith!” Lance cries, grabbing him by the elbows and Keith raises an eyebrow at the way he doesn’t seem to care how much of his arms are covered in flour, “Keith, you have to believe me.”

Keith hums noncommittally; Lance whines and Pidge laughs. Suddenly a large arm is being slung over his shoulder and Keith looks up to see Hunk leaning over to stare at Lance. “Let’s not forget, the woman is clearly gay.”

Lance groans, pushing away to moan something about evil, treacherous friends.

“I imagine she shot him down fast,” Keith says, picking the dough out of his nails as Hunk collects what he’d kneaded into a bowl to rise.

“Oh yeah,” Hunk laughs. “Two sentences in and she was ready to throw her drink and deck him, minor or not. That’s when Pidge and I stepped in to save the day.”

“Hunk restrained Lance and I took some liberties to ensure she wouldn’t talk to anyone about the three minors she’d seen hanging around the latest hot spot in town on a school night,” Pidge says, calm as can be despite the way Lance is leaning against her, arms slung over her shoulders and chin propped on her head.

“God… we made the worst decisions.” Lance grins at Keith and Keith feels the familiar heat rush to his cheeks while he does his best not to choke on his laughter.

Pidge throws him an amused look just as Shiro walks in the door. “Oh please, like that was the worst of it,” she jokes.

“Worst of what?” Shiro asks, hopping onto the dining table. He’s sweaty, a towel around his neck. A Shiro fresh from the gym meant Allura would be down soon too.  Keith passes him a latke from Hunk’s stack.

“Apparently they were a bit of a disaster back at the Garrison,” Keith explains, trying not to flinch when Lance moves from Pidge to drape himself all over Keith. Shiro raises a single eyebrow as Lance pulls Keith closer.

“Don’t be mean, Keith,” Lance jokes. “Shiro! Are you telling us that Keith never got into any trouble?”

“Oh no.” Shiro grins. And Keith can feel that familiar dread settle in his stomach as the smirk only grows on Shiro’s face. “Keith was a “model student,” he says with unnecessary air quotes, “And let’s pretend the few hundred situations I managed to pull him out of before it ended up on his record never happened.”

“Oh!” Pidge grins, the little devil. “Are you telling us that Keith was a troublemaker? I would have never guessed.”

“You are all terrible,” Keith says simply, accepting the drink Hunk hands him.

Lance’s laughter sounds like music when he’s this close.

.

 _There are dangers to being attracted to a boy like Lance McClain_ , Keith thinks as he does his best to keep his eyes off of Lance. Dressed to the nines in formal wear consisting of lovingly placed and draped fabric, embroidered and studded with some form of gem, Lance seems to float through the room as he dazzles their latest alliance members with a meaningful look and a well placed joke.

This is the point in which Keith became useless on these types of missions. You want to talk military strategy? Political gains? It might not have come easy, but Keith hadn’t gotten to the top of the Garrison out of just spite and raw talent. He’d done his studies, paid attention to the lessons Allura had given them, and knows how to walk with an attitude that made people shut up and listen. He is no natural. Not in any variation of the word. Not like Lance.

No Lance is…he is a godsend on these missions. Capable of reading people in a way Keith would have never had guessed based on those first few movements knowing him. All easy smiles and well placed jokes with a knack of removing any tension from the room. And he’s only gotten better with practice. Where Keith knew he is about to go red in the face from arguing, Lance leans over, smile, and suggest a break or a compromise. His annoyingly detail-oriented perspective picking up things Keith would have never even considered…well considering.

It is the reason they get sent out on these missions so often. The reason they make such a good team.

But now peace talks are over and celebrations are beginning. With every signing of a contract comes a party. Some planets ask them to stay longer, allow a festival. But Voltron is busy and the Paladins have long since learned their lesson of staying in one place for too long. No, just a party and they’ll be gone. Back to The Castle just in time for a late, late dinner and bed. Ready to zip off on their next mission or latest bout of Allura-driven team bonding exercise.

So while Keith knows it will be short lived, he can’t help that familiar stone settling in his stomach as Lance waves the last of his new friends away with a reminder they need to be dressed and rested before the party. Except this time that stone is heavier and followed by an unnecessary amount of dread that is starting to worry him. There is something wrong with these Romians. Something beyond their uncanny valley-esque faces and disproportioned bodies.  Something he’s long learned to look past when dealing with aliens, certain they must find Lance and Keith just as misshapen.

No...there is something in the air. Something in the way they tended to stick oddly close and yet hesitated in speaking to them. He thinks back to the moment at the end of the debates when he’d watched the King take far too long to sign the contract and has to wonder what it all means.

“You okay?” Lance asks once he is certain everyone has gone.

“I…” Keith shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Lance frowns and then taps a steady rhythm against Keith’s elbow. Keith freezes and fights the immediate urge to grab his bayard. _We’re being watched._

Keith forces himself to smile. “Probably just pre-party jitters. You know how I am.”

Lance laughs and if Keith didn’t know him so well he’d say it sounded right. “You’re such a wallflower. I have no idea why Allura sends you on these missions.” Lance is walking now and Keith falls into step, keeping his eyes straight ahead. Lance has his eyes on them. Best that Keith play casual. Every now and then he glances out the windows to admire the coast town and beyond that the expanse of blue reaching out to touch the horizon to keep his heart steady.

“Someone has to keep you in check,” Keith jokes. He doesn’t think it falls flat, but he can never really tell. This sort of thing isn’t his forte. Maybe Allura would be better off sending Hunk who was better at the subtler games of diplomacy. Who cares if he’s needed at the castle to finish working on the latest cluster explosives he and Pidge are working on? Certainly a quintant missed wouldn’t be the end of the world…

When they reach their rooms, Lance takes his hand and Keith follows him in. For a moment they wait in terse silence as Lance leans against the door, ears pressed to the wood. Finally, he takes a deep breath and steps away. “There’s something wrong here,” Lance whispers to Keith.

“You feel it too?” Keith whispers back as Lance takes a seat next to him on the bed.

Lance frowns at the door and Keith realizes Lance hasn’t been smiling often today. “They don’t trust us.”

“So what do we do?”

Lance shrugs. “Nothing. We have the treaty. We’re leaving in a few more vargas. Best not to bring attention to ourselves and we’ll bring it up with Allura when we get back.”

Keith groans and leans forward to place his face in his hands. “I hate this.”

Lance hums in agreement.

.

At least the party has something like alcohol. It was somewhat terrifying learning as they traveled through space that not enough cultures enjoy the wonders of alcohol. Not that Keith is an alcoholic of course.

(He’d had a few nights stuck alone in the desert. The only company the bottle of whiskey or rum the convenience store cashier had passed towards him out of pity and the knowledge he’d just lost everything he’d ever worked towards… Well, at least alcohol is hard to find in space…)

Now he stands leaning against the wall, doing his best to keep conversation with the six or so Romians who’d decided to stand around him.

“Of course,” Keith replies and prays the translator isn’t making him sound like a fool. “On earth, it depends on the country you’re discussing. But certain “basic foods” are subsidized by the government to ensure constant food production. And thanks to various international efforts, hunger is very much a thing of the past.”

A Romian by the name of Sinc turns to her friend and raises one perfect eyebrow, her eyes staying the same surreal wideness. It is hard getting past the fact that the Romians do not blink and Keith does his best to look at their noses. “I told you, Zanthia. This plan has merit. There is no reason crop farmers should take the hit this year when we need crop more than meat.”

“More people are moving towards a carnivorous diet now that the waters have become more and more barren,” Zanthia argues before turning to Keith. “Do you believe that other farms should pay for the failure of their neighbors, Paladin?”

Keith fights the urge to fidget under the stares of the group. “I would argue that the issue is more complicated than that, Miss Zanthia.”

Zanthia stares at him for a moment and he finds he cannot read a single expression from her face or her body language. “That is a fair assessment,” she decides finally. “I can only hope my friend here can remember that.”

When Lance comes for him, Keith almost sighs in relief. “Sorry friends,” Lance smiles, cutting into the circle, “But my friend here has yet to eat and I was hoping to take him to the buffet.”

As Lance pulls him away, Keith whispers, “Thank you.”

Lance laughs, “One more varga and then we can bow out. Don’t go thanking me just yet.”

Keith grins. “You think we’ll make it out of this one unscathed?”

“Don’t jinx us, Samurai,” Lance reminds him as they stand in line to take their food. At least it looks appetizing. Keith had quickly learned as time went on that far too many species liked goo over things you could chew. At least they’ve been slowly converting Coran and Allura towards something more edible. The green goo they’d first eaten when arriving now is left as emergency rations for when docking at a market to restock on supplies is too risky.

At least Coran has realized humans eat about a third of the salt Alteans seem to consume.

“The Prince is at least friendly,” Lance remarks, adding something purple and square to Keith’s plate. “Even if he doesn’t have as much to say as his father.”

“Really? The people I’ve been chatting with seem to prefer the Prince.”

“I’ve noticed the government seems to be torn between two factions,” Lance says. “Traditional and more progressive. A bit like home.”

Keith sighs, “As long as they keep up their end of the bargain…” he whispers to Lance just as they reach their seats by the royal family.

“Hello!” Lance greets them, charming smile firmly in place.

Let the games continue.

.

It is a half a varga til they’re be able to leave that Keith takes his chance. As Lance continues to woo the ballroom, Keith feels himself suffocating. Too many people. Too many walls. He needs to leave. It is a struggle finding the gardens. Lots of twists and turns. The occasional retracing of steps as he keeps his eyes on the windows, tracking how close he is getting.

When he finds himself in the surprisingly non-alien gardens, he takes a deep breath to smell non-cluttered, non-filtered, honest-to-god fresh air; he smiles and drops so he’s sitting crossed legged, head tilted up and up to the stars.

“I believe this is the most relaxed I’ve seen you all evening,” someone calls out and Keith tenses, only to smile when he spots the Prince. Oh good. Just the Prince.

“I’m afraid it is a fault of mine,” Keith replies politely because Allura taught him the art of giving away just enough and if nothing else, he’d learned that lesson by heart.

The Prince surprises him by taking a seat next to him. “I’m more surprised to see you without the Blue Paladin.”

Keith shrugs and looks away to stare at the rose-esque foliage around them. “Despite rumors to suggest otherwise, we are not attached at the hip,” here he smiles and turns to the Prince, “I am more surprised to see you’ve left your party.”

“I’ve grown tired as the vagra grows late,” the Prince comments, “It seems we had similar ideas.”

For a moment the silence grows and Keith can feel himself tensing up. “You have a wonderful home,” he says finally when the silence has gone on for too long.

The Prince nods. “Thank you. Yes...It is very beautiful. I would hope it stay that way.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Keith boasts.

The Prince nods thoughtfully as if he hadn’t heard Keith. “I can only hope others see your aid in the same light.”

And then they fall back into silence.

.

When Lance finds him, he’s more tense than he’d been before and ten times as weary.

.

It’s amusing, almost, to watch Lance deflate as soon as they exit orbit around the planet. “You want me on controls?” Keith asks.

For a moment Lance says nothing before nodding. “How long til we get home?”

“Navigation gives us 7.”

“Doboshes?”

Keith laughs, “Varga.”

Lance groans and throws himself onto his seat with an unnecessary amount of flourish. “I want my bed…and to be out of these clothes.” He tugs on his tunic for emphasis.

Keith shrugs. “I think you look good in it,” he says before he can stop himself. “Um…” he flushes and stares down at the steering wheel, “I mean…well. You do. Objectively.”

Lance laughs, loud and free for the first time all quintant; Keith’s cheeks feel only warmer. “Thank you,” he says, “You look pretty hot yourself.”

“Well…I didn’t call you hot,” Keith argues even though that’s what he meant. It is the principle of the thing after all.

Lance shoots him two mocking finger guns.

Keith rolls his eyes and wills his cheeks to stop blushing. “You’re awful,” he jokes.

Lance sticks his tongue out before falling silent, a thoughtful look taking over his face. “You want to talk about it?” Keith asks after a few moments of silence and their ship is safely out of the solar system. He spins to look at Lance.

Lance shrugs and frowns, biting his lip. “I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Keith hums. “We got away too easily.”

“You did seem to get along nicely with that Prince,” Lance says. And if it weren’t for the flat delivery, Keith would have taken it a teasing.

Keith frowns and considers for a moment taking off his shoes. “What? Are you kidding? I think that was the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had.”

“Really?” Lance sounds genuinely surprised and sits up straighter. Keith frowns harder. “You were so…” he gestures for a moment before slotting his fingers together, “Close.”

“I don’t think this species understands personal space,” Keith replies, dryly, “Also they don’t blink. I’m not interested in something straight out of the Twilight Zone.”

Lance pouts and mumbles something like, “Of course you watched that show,” which Keith chooses to generously ignore.

For a moment they fall silent and Keith takes to spinning his chair around and around, bored. He has half a mind to take a nap but Lance probably needs one more than him.

“What about the fact that he’s a guy,” Lance asks suddenly.

“What?”

“The Prince is a guy…” Keith stops spinning his chair to see Lance shrug, “Are you...um…”

“Are you asking me if I’m gay?” Keith asks because...okay? Weird.

Lance blushes.

“Yeah, I’m gay. Like...super homo,” Keith shrugs because it’s not a big deal. Honestly he’d thought Lance knew. “I thought everyone knew I was into dick. I mean...I wasn’t exactly discreet…”

Lance blushes harder and makes a sort of “oh” sound.

“...I’m bi,” he offers after another moment of silence.

“What!” And okay. He didn’t mean to sound as...as astonished as he did. Except he is. Because…”What?”

“I’m bi!” Lance is frowning now and standing. Why is he standing? And then he puts his hands on his hips, “Is that a problem?”

“No!” Keith jumps up and raises his hands as if to grab Lance before freezing, “I just… you really like girls so…”

Lance crosses his arms and leans back, a bit defensive, “I’m usually more into girls than guys. Is that a problem?”

Keith takes a seat and fights the urge to scream. “No. It...that is completely valid. I mean...I’m just gay so...but yeah. I thought maybe for some time I might be bi, but boobs just didn’t do it for me…”

“How’d you find out?” Lance asks, taking his seat. He doesn’t look angry, but Keith is finding there might be many things about Lance McClain he has misunderstood.

“Um….” Yeah, there was no way Keith was telling Lance that story. What was he supposed to say? He’d jack’d it to Lance’s abs before he’d bothered to learn his name? Except he’d sort of known his name and hated his face but adored his abs? Please just throw him out an airlock and let him suffocate in space peacefully. Thank you. “Porn.”

“Huh…” Lance smiles, “I had a crush on Shiro.”

Keith feels his stomach drop and quickly checks the controls. All stable. “Oh…” he says and tries to not sound weird. God he probably sounds weird, doesn’t he? God damn it. Stop it, Kogane. It’s just a crush. He didn’t say….

“Yeah! Shiro is a hero of mine. Man...I was so jealous you got to hang around him all the time. And I mean...it doesn’t hurt, the way he looks.”

 _Oh my god_ , Keith thinks as he stares out the windshield before plastering a smile on his face, “I mean...I might have thought the same thing until I met him.”

“He seems pretty hero-y,” Lance jokes.

 _You’re pretty hero-y,_ Keith thinks pettily. “Please. You wouldn’t say that if he had enough blackmail on you to send you to prison.”

Lance laughs and Keith tries his best.

.

The next quintant Keith drags himself into Hunk’s workroom, throws himself onto the fluffy collection of pillows Lance and Hunk have collected in the room, and proceeds to do his best to stop thinking. It takes a solid ten ticks for Hunk to turn and consider him. “You want to talk about it?”

Keith grunts into the pillow and rolls over. “...No.”

Hunk hums and goes back to his work. Yellow and orange sparks flying from his welding station as a monitor nearby continues to produce line after line of information in Altean numerics. For a moment they sit in relative silence. And Keith feels a soft sort of sleepiness overcome him. Either leftover from the way he’d dragged himself out of the bed after an awful, restless sleep or the fact that Hunk just seems to have that kind of aura about him, ever the faithful leg of Voltron, Keith finds himself falling into that place between sleep and awake, daydreaming of flying without the aid of machine, before a large clang wakes him.

“You okay?” he asks.

For a moment there is silence before Hunk replies, “Yeah…” He takes a deep breath before pushing himself from his desk. When he turns, Keith finally sees the dark circles under his eyes.

“You sure you’re okay, big guy?” he asks, sitting up as Hunk sits down.

Hunk hums for a moment before flopping back, raising his arms to stretch out his back before settling properly into the warm pillows. “Yeah… just tired. It’s been a long movement.”

“You guys still working on the upgrades for Black?” Keith asks.

Hunk groans, “So you know how it’s really cool that the lions talk and stuff?”

Keith nods.

“Less cool when they’re super picky and won’t let us manually test the tech and insist it’s perfect before it touches their perfect metal ass,” Hunk scowls before quickly going limp, “And it doesn’t help Allura is pressing us for a stronger, less expensive hand grenade to impress the Tigerns before we meet with them next movement. Like… there are only three of us. No offense,” he adds looking at Keith, “Y’all are great for assembly but I’m not trusting you, Lance, or Shiro with any experimental explosives.”

Keith shrugs. “Fair. I’m more the hit-’em-really-hard kind of guy anyway.”

Hunk laughs, “Yeah but…we’re all really tired. And I keep finding errors, which is pissing Pidge off but it’s not my fault she’s not paying attention. And Coran is worried about energy efficiency and the morals of war and blah blah blah.” He lets out another sigh and stares up at the ceiling. “But what’s wrong with you?”

“It…” Keith shrugs and looks down at his shoes, “It’s dumb.”

“Does it have to do with Lance?” Hunk asks. “You two seem better.”

Keith shrugs. “I just needed space to work some stuff out.”

“And you chose my workshop instead of the training room?” Hunk smiles. “I think Shiro would call that progress.”

Keith flushes and shrugs again, looking away. Speaking of Shiro… “I um…I hate feeling jealous.”

He waits, expects Hunk to say something. Usually Shiro would. At this point he’d point something out or agree with him, add an anecdote about his own experiences that placed him in a role of authority on the topic (and enough therapists and psych classes have left Keith with a fairly adequate understanding of how people work and it helps that Shiro likes to play things by the book when it comes to emotions. Neither of them are very good at it but Shiro likes to pretend). Then they’d do that back and forth until Keith comes to a conclusion that makes sense. Shiro is good at that: leading him towards the right answer.

Hunk though…Hunk is more of a listener it seems. He nods and waits for Keith to go on. “I…um…Sometimes I get jealous and I hate it because I know how destructive it can be,” Keith licks his lips and thinks back to his now ex-boyfriend Abhi for a moment before turning back to Hunk, “And I don’t know how to get over it.”

Hunk thinks for a moment before frowning, “Is there a reason you’re not talking to Shiro about this?”

Keith doesn’t say anything. How did Hunk do that?

Hunk hums and nods, “Okay…so. I think I get it.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. So you can’t stop being jealous. It is a natural, healthy emotion if handled correctly and I don’t want you to feel bad for feeling it,” Hunk explains, nodding to Keith.

“Okay,” Keith repeats, nodding back.

“So now you need to make a decision,” Hunk continues, placing two hands forward as if offering Keith a choice. “How important is this relationship to you?”

Keith presses his lips together before saying, “Important. Really important.”

“So are you going to let this ruin that? If it is so important?” Hunk asks, closing one hand and leaving his right hand open.

“No…” Keith mumbles, moving to look down at his right hand. “No! You’re right,” he says more forcefully.

Hunk smiles, “I’m always right.”

“Thanks, Hunk.”

“Of course! It’s what I’m here for,” Hunk says with an easy shrug, as if waving Keith’s words away. And if it weren’t for the fact that they were sitting so close, Keith might have missed the almost sad look that passes Hunk’s face.

“You’re here for more than that,” Keith finds himself saying before flushing, cheeks bright red.

“…I know, Keith,” Hunk smiles reassuringly, but something about it just doesn’t sit right with Keith.

So Keith adds, “I’m not as good at it, but you can talk to me too. Or Lance.”

There is a moment of silence where Hunk regards him before he smiles again and this one feels a little more genuine “…Thank you, Keith.”

“ Of course!” Keith says with maybe a little too much force, “You’re my friend.”

.

Lance finds him lounging around the common space. Hunk had finally kicked him out after Keith made the conscious decision to be a nuisance, poking at things and asking a million questions until Hunk had realized three vargas had passed with very little work done. And so Keith was banned to the space-equivalent of a living room without even TV to keep himself busy since it looks like Pidge _still_ isn’t done with the screen, her tools and laptop spread all around the room.

So when Lance finds him, Keith has taken to lounging on the sofa, hanging upside down with his legs dangling over the backrest--shoes on because of principal--staring at his hands as he contemplates time. “Done brooding for the day?” Lance asks, hands over his hips and looming close enough so that when Keith drops his hands, Lance is all he can see. “Or should I give you another hour?”

Keith pretends to think about it. It’s moments like these that Keith is reminded how far they’ve come since the start of all of this. A joke like that would have left them at each other’s throats once. Now it just leaves a sort of warm feeling in Keith’s stomach. “How about a few more hours?”

Lance pretends to scowl and swats at Keith’s knees. “Come on, Samurai! I’m bored!”

Keith laughs, “Alright, alright.” He brings his legs down and rolls onto his knees before kicking off the sofa to stand next to Lance.

Lance frowns and dusts the sofa cushions. “Raised by heathens,” he complains.

Keith just laughs again.

.

“Allura taught it to me,” Lance explains as they step into the game room, “but she’s busy dealing with the contracts for the Romians and the Tulfis -- you know how picky they can be.”

“Why aren’t you helping her?” Keith asks, falling into the beanbag chair.

Lance pouts. “Mandatory breaktime.”

Ah… mandatory breaktime. Implemented after Shiro trained to the point of passing out after a rough battle. Pidge hadn’t talked to Keith for two days when he’d been commanded to enforce it for the first time. It had been a hard two days.

“I’m almost out,” Keith says as Lance collects one of the playing cards from the cupboard next to the video game bookshelf. “Shiro’s got me on timeout til tomorrow.”

Lance groans as he takes a seat next to Keith in the other beanbag chair. “Coran says I’ve got three days excluding political disaster after I fell asleep in the middle of the debriefing.” He starts shuffling. “By the way, Allura’s coming for your report.”

Keith scowls. He hates those stupid reports. “So what are we playing?”

Lance grins as he hands Keith two cards face down. “Poker! Altean style.”

.

Keith is in hell.

That is quite simply the only reason God is punishing him like this. And by God, he glares over his cards, he means Pidge. They’d managed to play a round before Pidge had found them, pulling their beanbags close so Lance could look at his hand and explain the rules, breath warm on Keith’s neck. It honestly plays similar enough to Texas hold’em with a few new rules to shake things up that it was easy to catch on. Keith had been having fun.

When Pidge had found them, she’d taken one look at his face and grinned something evil, sat down, and commanded Lance deal her in. They’d gotten half way through the next round before she asked about betting. Apparently, she “played to win.”

And now here they are. Half way through a new round. Shoes gone. No pants. And one sock down. The knowledge of what is to come weighing heavy on his mind.

“Call in,” Lance says, pulling off his last sock to add to the pot. Keith quietly pulls off one of his sock. Pidge smiles and takes off her shoe.

Lance deals three cards. Two queens and a king. Alfor’s faces smiles up at them, ambivalent to the current situation.

Making sure to catch his eye with that same evil smile, Pidge throws in her shirt. Keith feels his stomach sink. He tries his best to keep his eyes on his cards, but it is a fool’s attempt. And he watches as Lance adds his own shirt to the pile.

He wonders if his cheeks look as red as they feel. “Fold,” Keith says, placing his cards down.

Lance adds another card to the pile. Pidge takes off her pants. Lance takes off his pants.

Keith wonders what he did this morning to deserve this.

“You really want to do this, Lance?” Pidge asks. She’s going to win. They all know it. But Lance has never been one to back down from a challenge no matter the odds. One of the things, Keith could safely say, he loves about him.

“Won’t scare me, Pidgeon,” Lance taunts, placing the last card down. And then slowly he sets down his own hand. “Straight.”

“Oh! That’s a good one, Lance,” Pidge admits before her smile turns into a smirk, “But not good enough. Royal flush, boys,” Pidge cackles as she places a pink ace and jack down next to the pile. “Read’em and weep.”

Lance scowls. “This isn’t over yet,” he challenges as Pidge pulls their clothes towards her.

“You’re down to a sock and a pair of underwear, Lancelot,” Pidge points out as she pulls her pants and shirt back on, “What are you going to do? Play naked?”

Lance glances down at his underwear and then over at Keith who is still wearing a sock, a shirt, a sweater, and his gloves. “Keith will help me,” Lance declares.

Pidge looks at him. And Keith knows she knows. Knows this is some sick payback for something he doesn’t even remember because Pidge has been known to hold a grudge. “Why not?” she grins, “It’ll be more fun watching you both lose.”

.

It takes about two rounds before Keith is down to a sock. Pidge has only lost her shirt. Which Lance is wearing. Which is not great because it is a very small shirt on very broad shoulders and that’s not fair. Keith doesn’t deserve this. He’s a good person.

Also he’s cold.

“Last one,” Pidge grins down at them from her mountain of clothes. And Keith just wants his pants back please. Why did he agree to this?

Lance takes his hand. Oh….That’s why he agreed to this. Keith watches as Lance laces their fingers together before looking up to see Lance smiling, leaning close. “We got this, Samurai.”

“No,” Keith admits, “We really don’t.”

“That’s quitter’s talk!” Lance cries and Keith can feel how warm Lance’s hand is in his and his stomach is doing something strange and fluttery. “We’re in this together, right?”

Keith take a deep breath and squeeze’s Lance’s hand. “It was an honor fighting with you.”

.

Their loss is devastating. Lance starts to take off his boxers before Pidge screams something about virgin eyes and starts throwing their clothes at them.

At least Keith got to hold Lance’s hand.

.

After the embarrassing, disaster of a...whatever he was supposed to call that, Keith decided the only way to figure this out is to suck it up and go on a date. Any date. With anyone. At this point he was past the point of desperate and scraping at rock bottom.

So when the angels of sexual crises smiled down upon him, it was in the form of Angelica Tice and her nervous smile. They’d been partners in a class project back in September, had almost been paired up in terms of Communications Officer and Pilot before Keith had been pulled out of the beginner class and placed into Fighter Pilot thanks to some previously undiscovered test scores. Keith liked Angelica. She was a nice person. Easy to talk to. And when she wasn’t blushing or stuttering like she was doing now, she had a fantastic sense of humor. And aesthetically, Keith could say she was nice to look at.

Did he like _like_ her? No.

But wasn’t that the point of dating?

So when she was done stuttering through her invitation to dinner next Friday, one of the rare and few weekends that students were allowed to go into town unchaperoned, Keith had smiled and nodded his agreement, “Do you want me to pick the restaurant or…?”

She squeaked, blushed harder, and looked up at him through her lashes in a way that he knew should be hot but instead just looked cute, “I-um I can pick the place if you want.”

“Great!” Keith said, handing his phone over, “Let me know what time you want to meet and I’ll see you then.”

.

“I can’t believe you accepted a date,” Shiro grinned, pulling one of Keith’s better black shirts out of the closet, “I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more proud.”

“I am being considered best pilot of our generation. I am this,” He raised his hand and pressed the tips of his pointer finger and thumb together, “close to beating your record. And you’re proud that I got a date?”

Shiro threw him a bland look. “How many people have you talked to outside of class this week?”

Keith was silent for a moment, thinking. “...I talked to Angelica.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow in silent judgement and Keith scowled. Okay, so maybe he had a point. Maybe.

“I still wish I knew how fancy this place is going to be,” Shiro frowned, putting the shirt back to glare at his overstuffed closet consisting mostly of uniforms and jeans, a variety of solid or patterned shirts, and a few novelty shirts Shiro had taken to bringing him. “I knew I should have taken you shopping on Thursday.”

“Shiro!” Keith groaned, “Just...pick something. I am getting cold sitting in this towel! It’s a date. Not an awards gala.”

“This is special!” Shiro argued, “This is your first date. Even if you don’t like the girl, you should make an effort.”

Keith frowned for a moment before sighing and standing up, careful to keep the towel tied around his waist, “Why not my black jeans and that nice blue shirt? Simple. Collar so it’s a little fancy. No stains.”

Shiro sighed and glared at the closet before pulling out the skinny jeans and the shirt. “...wear that sweater I got you.”

“Shiro! It’s itchy!”

He pulled out the sweater and threw it at Keith. “I’m going to try and find your cologne and you will let me do your make up!”

Keith groaned. He knew a losing battle when he saw one.

.

By the time Shiro was ready to let him go, Keith was running two minutes late and almost sweating by the time he reached the bus stop. Luckily, it was easy to spot Angelica. She looked...honestly stunning. Wearing a simple black dress and large statement jewelry, her hair was curled and pinned up in such a way so that it framed her face while keeping it out of the way. And her shoes had kitties on them. In all honestly, it was pretty adorable.

“Um...hi!” Keith said. But now that he had her attention, he was unsure what to do and so settled for an awkward sort-of wave. “You look great.”

She stared at him for a moment before blinking a few times and blushing. “You look really nice, too.”

Keith tugged at the hem of his sweater a bit self-consciously. “Thanks.”

Luckily the bus came before he can figure out what else to say. They found a seat towards the back, pressed close so he’s hyper aware of where her thigh touches his. “Um…”

“I got us reservations at this nice restaurant my friend recommended. It’s a vegan bakery but they serve Italian food,” she said, pulling out her phone and scrolling through some directions.

“You’re vegan?” Keith asked. He might be having a few doubts.

“Oh yeah!” she said passionately, turning off her phone and turning to him so now her body was pressed close against his arm. “The production of beef produces more greenhouse gasses than the entire fleet of cars on the road today! And that’s not even touching on the horror of chicken coops and the abuse of immigrant workers in slaughterhouses.”

“Oh…” he said weakly, thinking back to the steaks still marinating in Shiro’s fridge.

“Hold on, let me send you a few links,” she said, thumbing through her phone. And suddenly Keith can feel his phone buzzing in his back pocket. “I read these and they changed my life! I had no idea that things were so awful. My family ate a ton of meat and knowing I contributed to the problem…”

“Well, you’re only one person,” Keith reassured her, shrugging, “I doubt you made such a huge impa--.”

“It’s not that,” she cut in, leaning even closer so he’s pressed back against the window. The vibrations of the bus on the road feeling strange against his back, “It’s about voting with our purchases! Corporations only listen to our wallets, Keith! We have to stand up to The Man!”

“I totally get what you mean.” Now that is something Keith can get behind! “Look,” he leaned in closer, “I just can’t fucking believe the Republicans. They claim to be pro-life but look at how we’ve been treating the world in the past few years of Republican-controlled senate. The government has become so self-centered, focused on only fighting wars that can give us oil that we forget that the US has a very real promise--as a supposed leader of the free world--to use our military to protect freedom.” He took a deep breath and grinned, happy to find someone else who isn’t Shiro who gets it. Maybe this date wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

“Oh yeah! I totally cried when I heard about the water crisis. I just couldn’t believe something like that could happen,” she said, standing to signal to the bus driver to let them off, “And I know it’s been a few years but the everyone’s talking about how the stability isn’t going to last and I just don’t want to think about that happening again.”

The bus came to a halt and they both stepped off. “I’m just glad Trump wasn’t as awful as everyone said he’d be,” Keith admitted, “And I personally like Kirsten Gillibrand even if people argue she’s not liberal enough.”

“I like the fact that she’s a little more moderate,” Angelica shrugged before turning to the hostess, “Table for two under Tice.”

“Right this way,” she said with a smile before leading them to the back of the room where a table had been laid out. Two small candles and a rose dominated a majority of it. “Your waiter will be right with you.”

Keith took a tentative seat, smiling unsurely at the table. “I..um…”

Angelica blushed. “I hope it’s not too much.”

“It’s very romantic,” Keith settled on. For a moment there, he’d forgotten this was a date. Now he focused, staring at her. She was still pretty. And very cute. But...but it didn’t feel the same. Not like how he’d seen the swimmer. There was no real desire to get closer. To hold her hand or press his body against hers in a context outside of proximity. He reached out for her hand and wondered why he didn’t feel more when she took it.

 _Is it because I don’t like like her?_ Keith wondered as a waiter came by with water and handed them their menus. But no. That couldn’t be right? He couldn’t sit here and say he was in love with that swimmer. Or any of the other boys he’d seen while stalking the athletics building these past few weeks who’d he’d noticed were pretty...well, hot.

He set his menu down and looked at Angelica, really looked at her. Pretty hair. Pretty make up. Pretty dress and pretty jewelry. A fantastic sense of humor and a good conversationalist, even if she was a vegan. She was, in the simplest terms, a very beautiful girl who would grow up to be a very beautiful woman.

And he didn’t feel a goddamn thing.

His stomach soured and he stared down at his menu. He didn’t like girls. He wasn’t into women. He rolled those thoughts around and around in his head and tried to understand why he felt disappointed. Shiro had said it was okay to like boys. And liking boys wasn’t that big of a deal these days, right? Well...you did get the occasional asshole, but every place Keith had lived, he’d never seen any blatant homophobia. Liking boys was...it was normal these days, now that gay marriage had been legal for the last decade.

 _I don’t like girls_ , Keith thought as Angelica smiled at him and asked what he wanted to eat.

The food tasted like ash in his mouth. And he didn’t think it was because it was vegan.

.

In the end, she kissed him at the door to her dorm room before pulling away. “This isn’t going to happen again, is it?” she asked.

Keith searched for an answer, any answer other than the truth. “No,” he admitted, “I did have a good time, though.”

Angelica closed her eyes and nodded, “You’re a good guy, Keith Kogane.”

“Could we...try being friends?” he asked, wringing his hands.

She took a deep breath and when she opened her eyes, they looked a little wet, “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

.

They’re working to free another mining colony when the Prince contacts him.

The mines have been nothing but twists and turns. A never ending, dimly lit maze laying several layers beneath the surface. Not as deep as the Balmerans, but deep enough. Hunk and Keith travel carefully. The aliens of this planet are slightly taller than the average human with the ability to see in the dark. Their skin paper white and translucent. There is no light in this place except for the flashlights on their suits. The mines are almost oddly empty except for the occasional sentry. The people corralled into caverns and cells. The bars harder to break than normal, but a few rounds from Hunk’s gun to weaken the bars and a few solid hits from Keith’s sword is enough to break them down. It seems the Galra are getting better about keeping their prisoners prisoners.

“Roll call,” Shiro sounds over the coms, his voice cracking and somewhat distant but still audible. Somewhere, Keith can hear the sound of running water.

“Team Angry Friend is accounted for,” Hunk calls, flashing Keith a thumbs up as he rolls his eyes. Though he can’t fault Hunk. Even the poorest of jokes is necessary to keep this situation from being any creepier than it already is. “We’re making our way to the center. So far none of the survivors know where the Galra forces have gone.”

“I…” There’s a break and it takes a moment for Keith to realize it’s Lance, “I thin-nk they’re leading us...the center.”

“You’re breaking up,” Keith calls. There is a sharp bang before the coms fall silent. He and Hunk share a worried look.

“What’s going on?” Hunk asks, pulling off his helmet to check its surface before popping open the small control panel on the inside of the helmet to see if anything is wrong.

Keith raises his left hand and plays with the dial. “I’m not hearing anything here…”

There is another moment of silence before a sharp static noise comes through and then Pidge, “Inter--...Get…” Pidge calls, “Lan-... Shiro down.”

Keith curses, pulling out his bayard. “Do you remember which portion of the mines they’re in?” And he’s already moving, sprinting back up the tunnel they’re in, Hunk right on his tail.

“West of us, but that doesn’t mean a goddamn thing if I can’t get these coms to work,” Hunk snaps, “Keith… Keith!” Hunk grabs Keith’s arm and spins him around, “I need you...Keith!” He tightens his grip as Keith tries his best to pull away.

“Hunk!” Keith yells, cursing at how goddamn strong Hunk is, “Hunk let go...Shiro!”

“I know!” Hunk shakes him before letting him go, only to grab his wrist and pulling him closer so his flashlight shown stronger on the inside of the helmet Hunk is still holding, “We’re going to need the suit’s trackers to get to Lance, Shiro, and Pidge. And all of that is connected into the com system.”

Keith freezes, staring at Hunk with wide eyes before taking a deep breath. Okay. Okay...Keith gets it now. “That...that seems like a pretty big flaw…”

“Oh I know!” Hunk says finally letting go of Keith’s hand. Keith clasps his hands together and dips his head forward to keep the light on Hunk. “I...Pidge, Coran, and I have been having trouble keeping up with upgrades. We didn’t think anything in the mines could interfere with the system though. I mean, we scanned the planet.”

Keith kneels down and tilts his head so the beam is even stronger and tries not to think too much about the fact that he can’t see more than five feet around them. Hunk pulls out one of the omnitools from one of his suit pockets. “Do you think the scanners missed something?”

Hunk shakes his head as he pulls two wires out of his helmet. “No. And I’m not seeing anything wrong with my helmet that could be causing this. I would have to say something is blocking us, but Pidge and I have gotten pretty good with getting around Galra tech.”

It’s then that Keith’s light flickers out. “Oh no.”

He fights down the need to stab something when Hunk grabs his hand. “Don’t panic,” Hunk commands and Keith does his best to ignore the panic in Hunk’s own voice. “Okay...We can get around this.”

Keith focuses on his breathing, leaning closer until he can feel Hunk against his entire side. “Hunk...This might be a bad time to note I’m really scared of the dark.”

“Oh no.”

“Ye..yeah,” Keith whispers, licking his lip as he does his best to keep his voice even.

“Okay, Keith…um. Close your eyes?” Hunk whispers, moving so he’s wrapping both arms around Keith in a loose hug, “And I want you to match my breathing.”

Keith does as told.

“In…”

Keith breaths in.

“Out.”

Keith breaths out.

“In.”

Keith presses his hands flat against Hunk’s chest piece and does his best to keep time. Does his best not to think about the fact that they’re stranded miles below the surface in pitch blackness. Does his best not to worry about Shiro. Or Pidge. Or Lance.

He presses his face into Hunk’s chest and he does his best not to think about what else could be in these tunnels.

It’s then that the message comes through. Surrounded by darkness and huddled together to remind themselves that there is still something solid out there, Keith hears the Prince on his com.

“Did you hear that?” Keith whispers, pulling away as the voice speaks up again.

“Keith…”

“Red Paladin,” the Prince calls a third time, “I-- I am so sorry.”

“Your majesty?” Keith asks, pulling back to stand straight. Left hand tapping against the interface on the helmet to bring the volume up.

“My people have made a great mistake, Red Paladin,” the Prince tells him, “Despite my warnings, they have chosen the wrong side of this war.”

“What did they do…” Keith asks, panic rising in his voice. Somewhere nearby Hunk is moving and when did Hunk let go? Why can’t Keith feel him anymore? Is...Is that Hunk?

“They have given the Galra technology to mute your systems,” the Prince tells him, “But I have broken this. I am more than capable.”

“Can you tell me how to get around it?” And this is Hunk. And then there are hands on his waist and Keith tries to focus on his breathing.

In and out. In and out.

“Yes. I am uploading a series of files to your screens,” the Prince tells them, "They should allow you to get around my people’s technology. I only ask that you take this into account when you are safe, Red Paladin.”

Keith nods before remembering the Prince cannot see him. “Yes. We...we will take this into account.”

“Alina’s speed, Voltron,” the Prince signs off.

There is a moment of silence and then Hunk is moving, “I’m going to fix this, Keith,” Hunk tells him as he slowly moves away. “And then we’re going to save the others. Okay?”

Keith swallows hard and crouches down. “Okay.”

Keith counts the ticks and breaths.

Hunk works.

When the light flickers back on, Keith fights down the urge to cry, blinking the tears away as he takes a few deep breaths. Slowly he looks up and meets Hunk’s eye. “You okay, buddy?” Hunk asks.

Keith nods.

“Okay,” Hunk’s smile turns vicious, “Because I got the coms working.”

.

They split up.

It’s necessary. And terrifying. Hunk, who is carrying the majority of the supplies for their team heads to Pidge and Shiro’s location. Further north of their original position and closer to the surface Keith is desperate for. Keith goes south to Lance.

They don’t know why Team Big, Tol, and Smol split up and Keith treads carefully. Bayard out and sword in dagger form to mark the wall as he goes, a clear indication of where he’s been so he’ll be able to get back in case of more technical difficulties.

Lance’s dot on Keith’s map is worrying. Fading in and out as he makes his way through. The Prince’s gift is far from perfect. But it is better than the darkness. He takes another right and keeps his eyes on Lance. The dot is growing bigger, but it’s stopped moving.

“Don’t do this to me, McClain,” Keith hisses, pressing forward. “Not yet.”

The first batch of sentries he finds are weaker versions, less armed than the usual soldiers they’ve been dealing with. Most likely last-minute back up. He dispatches them as quickly as possible. Using the darkness to his advantage, he sneaks up behind the sentry and slices one in the stomach before spinning to stab the other one in the back before the others realize he’s there. He moves quickly to cut the rest of them down. Before he moves on, he grabs a rifle. He’s a lousy shot but it’s better than nothing.

The next group of sentries is what he’s used to. Heavily armed and better coded. They move fast, almost like the gladiators they train with on the ship. But at the end of the day, there is something to be said about Altean engineering. As he moves through them, he notices they’re funneling into a smaller cavern to the side. His helmet calls for him to keep going straight, turn left at the next junction. And he freezes for a moment, indecisive. What should lead him? His instincts or this map?

A sentries get a lucky shot, grazes him on the side. Nothing his suit can’t handle but it smarts. And it is enough to get him moving. He cuts down two more sentries. Transforms his dagger into the full sword and makes his way forward. In the corner, he sees Lance. Perched on a ledge with some cover, sniping down sentries. His aim is impeccable as always and Keith focuses on thinning the masses.

He turns his coms on, “Hunk, I’ve found Lance.”

There is a delay and then, “Good...Shiro injured but okay.” Hunk replies, “I’m getting...Pidge and Shiro updating. Will send files-- Get to Lance.”

Keith takes down two more sentries and spins, cutting down two more on his left. These sentries have mostly blades. The few with guns are keeping their focus on Lance and Keith runs forward, stabbing one through the back before moving to do the same to another.

But this one blocks him and he stumbles, takes an extra step back and leaves himself open on the left for the sentry...and no. This one doesn’t move like a machine. This is a Galran. And he’s fast. Keith blocks with his left, forcing the Galran’s sword down and lunges forward trying to catch the Galran in the stomach with his Mamoran blade, but the Galran is stronger, leans to the side and blocks Keith with his forearm.

Suddenly Keith finds himself stumbling back, his sword lifted up and his right arm thrown back, leaving him vulnerable. And before he can counter or catch himself, there is a dagger digging into the weak point of his armor: his abdomen. The blade strikes fast and with enough force to cut through his undersuit and he gasps. It feels like acid or fire. It burns.

For a moment, he fears it’s struck his stomach before he looks down, breathing through the pain. Close but not fatal. Not yet. From somewhere above, through the ringing in his ears, Keith can hear Lance calling his name. And then the sentries around him are dropping as flies as he does his best to keep his knees from buckling.

But it is not enough. Keith falls and as he stares at the blood dripping to the floor. Dark red against sand yellow in the glow of his flashlight. When the Galran soldier knocks him out, he barely feels it.

.

 

.

 

.

 

.

Keith wakes to the feeling of swaying. His body burns. Breathing burns. It’s dark, too dark. But the body carrying him glows a faint purple. And if he squints through the black, he can make out rocky walls and rocky floors.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them time has passed, too much time. But now he can see Lance slung over the shoulder of another sentry. Legs tied. And Keith shifts, feels his own restraints around his wrists. The walls are smoother here. There is light here. Built into the corners where ceiling meets wall.

They’re in the center.

This is not good.

Keith turns his head and hears metal hit metal. He still has his helmet: good. That means they probably don’t know about the Prince’s gift. He shifts his weight and the sentry adjusts, tightens its hold on his lower back where Keith can feel the pull of bandages wrapped around his abdomen. They’d treated his wounds which means they want him and Lance alive: good.

He can work with that.

Keith swings his legs out and shifts, throwing himself like an anchor off of the sentries shoulder to hit the ground hard. His wound is screaming and he bites his lip to keep from voicing it as he rolls to get his legs under him. There is a moment of stillness as the sentry’s programming catches up with the current reality before Keith is moving, body checking the sentry holding Lance. Knocking it back hard enough to dislodge Lance, who drops to the floor with a dull thud. Keith scrambles, slamming his boot down onto the sentry and feels the satisfying crunch of metal. He snatches the knife from its holster.

He holds the knife between his bound hands and runs forward, ignoring the burn of the laser blast against his shoulder to slam the knife into the sentry. Uses his body weight to bring it down hard before scrambling up and  slamming the knife back down on it’s head plate,

Slowly he turns the knife around and carefully slides it between his wrist and the plastic-like ties restraining him, hissing as he cuts along the vein, praying it isn’t as deep as it looks. He shoots glances down the hallway as he hunkers down against the wall, Lance still lying unnaturally still at his feet. Blood pools above the wound as he moves the knife back and forth, back and forth until he hears a snap. He rips through the last of his ties and shifts the blade to one hand, squirming the other under Lance’s unresponsive body and heaving upright, biting his tongue to cut back the scream from the strain the movement puts on his stomach.

With a grunt, Keith manages to pull Lance’s arm over his shoulder before grabbing a gun a sentry had dropped. Practically dragging the other paladin as he staggers back down the hall the way they came, he doesn’t notice the smear of blood he leaves behind.

After several painful moments of struggling to remain upright and thanking whoever might be listening that they didn’t run into any sentries, he finds a small room, kind of like a utility or maintenance closet with enough dust to suggest it isn’t used often. He slams the door behind him with his foot and carefully sets Lance against the far wall, half propped up, before pushing one of the larger boxes in front of the door. His wrist is aching and he searches the utility closet until he finds a towel. It’s a bit dirty but for now it’s good enough.

Slowly he settles himself next to Lance, back propped up against the shelves with a clear view of the doorway, gun resting raised on his bent knees. Lance slumps lifelessly against him and he takes a deep breath, working through the pain in his stomach to check Lance over.

What he sees doesn’t look good. They treated a few of Lance’s wounds in the same way they’d treated Keith’s: tight bandages around the worst of them, leaving Lance half mummified. But some of them were stained red and they hadn’t bothered to rub away the blood from some of Lance’s more shallow cuts along his cheeks and a few on his side that Keith could see through the tears in the body suit.

What happened when he was knocked out?

As he’s checking Lance’s injuries, careful not to poke or prod too harshly that Lance finally, finally begins to stir. “Wha…?” he slurs before clearing his throat harshly, “Keith?” Lance squints and tries to sit up before hissing.

Keith carefully pulls Lance back down and lets out a sigh of relief, gently wiping away some of the blood from Lance’s forehead. _Head injury?_ “Hey, buddy.”

Lance rubs at his eyes before leaning in even closer. “You look awful.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Keith jokes before sobering quickly. “What... happened?”

Lance tries to shrug before hissing, grabbing at his ribs. And soon that hiss turns into a wet cough until he’s hunched over, shaking from the force. Keith does his best to keep him still, to ease the pain. But there is nothing he can do. He’s helpless to watch until Lance’s body settles. And he leans to the side to spit. It comes out red. Lance turns to look at him, tears in his eyes. “Please tell me you’ve got a plan.”

Keith blinks. Once. Twice…. Oh…. Slowly he lifts his left hand and radios Hunk, “Hey.”

There is a moment of silence and then “HEY!” It’s Pidge and Keith flinches at the frequency. Lance throws him a worried look, “You’ve been quie...three varga and all you can fuck-...is ‘hey?’” Pidge snarls, “When I find...I’m go--... break your fucking face.”

There is a brief struggle and then Allura is on the line, “Keith, whe-- are you?”

Keith takes a deep breath and shifts the gun on his knees, “Near the center. They’ve got a proper looking base in here. We’re in one of the utility closets.”

Lance frowns, “You are awful at pl--” and suddenly he’s coughing again and this time they’re worse. He doubles over, clutching at his stomach. Each exhale leaves them both rattling as Keith does his best to stabilize Lance until Lance is bent over far enough that his head is touching the ground. Keith grabs at his shoulders, lost.

“You guys need to get here quick,” Keith commands. “Lance isn’t doing to great.”

There is another burst of noise over the coms as Lance catches his breath and Keith holds his. “Stay stro--,” And it’s Shiro. Faint and breaking up but there. Breathing is suddenly so much easier, “-ng. We’ll...as fast as….” The connection breaks then, the static echoing over the coms like a taunt.

“Mmmm tired,” Lance mumbles from his spot and Keith swallows hard. He watches in horror as the stains along the bandages begin to spread.

“Hey, don’t do this,” Keith whispers. “I need my sharpshooter awake.”

Lance laughs bitterly as Keith clutches at Lance’s chest, applying pressure.

“Lance…”

“Just for a moment,” Lance whispers, leaning close to bury his face in Keith’s neck so Keith can feel his breathing. “I promise…”

Keith freezes as he feels Lance’s breathing stutter, “Lance…” When Lance doesn’t react, he moves, puts the gun aside to bring Lance into his lap and...no. No nononono no. “Please,’ Keith begs, shaking Lance’s shoulder while doing his best to avoid aggravating any more injuries, “You gotta wake up, Lance. I need you awake, Lance.”

But Lance doesn’t react.

Keith places a hand above Lance’s nose and fights back tears when he feels how weak it is. “C’mon,” Keith prays, “Not like this…” He fumbles with his com, trying to catch another signal: Hunk. Pidge. The Prince. Shiro...He just… He needs someone. He needs someone to tell him it is going to be okay. “Not like this, Lance,” Keith repeats as tears begin to fall. The static haunts him as he lets his hand fall to add more pressure to the wound. If he could only slow it, buy some time.

Just more time. That’s all he wanted. Lance wasn’t supposed to go like this. Bleeding out slowly on the floor of a utility closet in some backwards, bottom-feeding Galra base. No...he was...he was supposed to go out in a blaze of glory. Explosions as bright and loud as he was. He was supposed to die of old age, surrounded by his family on Earth.

Not like this. Not like this.

“Not yet,” Keith prays to whoever is listening, “Please, please. Please give us more time. I didn’t...I didn’t get to…” Get to what? Get to do what? And Keith doesn’t even know. But he knows he needs more time. More time to joke around and smile. More time to hang out and tell stories. More time to see Lance smile. More time to just...be with Lance.

Keith bows his head and sobs, downs out the pain of his wounds with the beating of his heart.

_Not yet…_

.

 

.

 

.

Time passes.

Keith keeps vigil. His coms are dead. But Lance still breathes. His wounds ache. But Lance still breathes. His eyes hurt. But he keeps his gun trained on the door. Because Lance still breathes.

The quiet drags on.

.

 

.

 

.

The fighting breaks the monotony. It is far away. Echoing down the long winding Galran hallways and he turns his com back on.

Nothing.

He checks Lance’s breathing, presses his ear to Lance’s chest to keep himself grounded despite the way his body screams.

When he looks down, the red is spreading.

.

 

.

Allura comes for them in the end, breaks down the door before any sentry lays eyes on them. Blocks Keith’s shots with a terrifying amount of efficiency.

“You’re safe.”

He drops his gun to stare down at Lance.

He isn’t breathing.

.

 

.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AH!! I posted it. Omg. I think this is the longest single chapter I have ever posted. I just...wow... This fic was such a labor of love and I'm so happy it's finally here! This idea was actually one of the first ones I had after getting into the fandom!
> 
> Please let me know what you think!
> 
> Also, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in the Voltron Big Bang. I've never hosted a fandom event before and I know it wasn't perfect. But you guys made it perfect! I had a ton of fun creating this story and working with my artists and getting to meet some amazing people. I'm really excited to keep hosting fandom events in the future! I hope you will all join me for them. 
> 
> Artists: [Thislovelymaelstrom](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) | [Lil-Miss-Epic](http://lil-miss-epic.tumblr.com/) | [Noririna](http://noririna.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Betas: [MomOfTheYear2k16](http://momoftheyear2k16.tumblr.com/) | [ Mercera ](http://merc-era.tumblr.com/)  
> | [ Fabulousanima ](http://fabulousanima.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Title Inspo: Shape of You by Ed Sheeran
> 
> EDIT:  
> So Fabulousanima is amazing and beta'd this chapter so that the tenses and typos and grammar errors are all gone!! We should all send her some major love! THANK YOU!!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> whelp... that took longer than anticipated.

Keith wakes in Shiro’s arms.

He’s disoriented, weak and woozy like when you’ve just woken up from a deep, deep sleep and don’t feel like moving. Except a little different. Because exhaustion claws at his shoulders and breathing past the cold in his lungs and in his bones is harder than it should be. When he tries to move his legs, they buckle until it is only Shiro holding them up, his arms unnaturally warm against Keith’s back until he pulls Keith up into a princess hold. And Keith grunts, lets his head fall listless against Shiro’s shoulder.

“Lance…” And he doesn’t even mean to say it. But once he does he can’t stop thinking it. _Lance. Lance. Lance…_ “...wh-where….” His throat hurts as he forces himself to make sounds, holds loosely to the material of Shiro’s shirt--no vest, no zipper digging into his cheek, just warmth--“Lance….”

“It’s okay,” Shiro tells him, voice warm and calming and Keith can hear his heartbeat, just a little too fast. And Keith tries to will his eyes open, tries to make his fingers move. “Rest, Keith. Rest.”

And there is a bed. Sheets. A pillow. And then blankets wrapping around him. The pull of sleep growing stronger as his limbs grow heavier and heavier. But still he tries to move, tries to open his eyes, get up, walk. “La--” Keith mumbles, trying to lift his head at least. “Lah…”

“It’s going to be okay,” Shiro whispers, laying a warm hand over Keith’s eyes. Keith can feel the fight leave his body as he melts into the pillow. “Sleep for now. Everything will be better in the morning.”

Keith sleeps.

.

Shiro is there when he wakes, a warm presence against his back as he opens his eyes to the semi-tidy state of his bedroom. Clothes and armor flung in a corner. Books and papers left half-open and half-read on his desk. A few knickknacks: a shiny rock he liked, a few carved statues he’d gotten on Koris or any of the other markets they’ve passed through. His music player is on, the noises of a Sulvian singer’s deep voice accompanied by the steady drums and piano-esque scales are painting the room in an almost surreal light. Everything feels distant. His body feels light. Like the only thing anchoring him to this room is the sheets and Shiro’s arm slung across his waist.

For a moment--just a moment--Keith can almost pretend nothing happened.

“You awake?” Keith mumbles, voice slurred with sleep as he turns onto his back, dislodging Shiro’s arm.

After a moment Shiro hums and sits up, hair puffed up like usual, rubbing sleepily at the corner of his mouth. “We should go to breakfast,” he says finally when Keith continues to lie still, staring at the ceiling and breathing slow. “You were too out of it to eat last night.”

Keith takes a deep breath and steels himself. “Shiro, where’s Lance?”

Shiro slowly crawls out of bed and grabs for his shirt. “Hunk said he was going to make something really good for breakfast since we got some new supplies from the Romians--”

“Shiro,” Keith interrupts, “What happened to Lance?”

Shiro takes a deep breath, keeping his back to Keith as he finishes putting on his shirt. “After breakfast, Keith,” Shiro whispers, voice wavering under a strain Keith has only heard after the worst of Shiro’s nightmares. “Let’s… after breakfast.”

And what can Keith do other than accept?

.

Remember how he said it all started back then, with a shirtless Lance in the middle of a group stripping session? Well, Keith has never been very good at lying to himself.

Because the truth of the matter, the real truth--and not the truth he tells Shiro (or tries to tell himself) that it’s all physical, all smooth skin and strong muscle--is that it started a long time ago.

It started with a crash.

It started with Keith waking up with his lion propped on her side, half-sunken into sludge on the floor of a jungle. The Black Lion signal flickering on and off on his helmet as 15, no 10, no 15 miles away with no response from its pilot or anyone else.

It started with isolation.

Red was quiet in his head, leaving him with the sense that he had lost something irreversible. Shiro’s fate a guillotine that hung over him as he picked his way through the marsh. The steady rising and falling of miles leaving him terrified that maybe his helmet is wrong. There was no Black Lion or Black Paladin at the end of his journey, just more marsh and jungle to hike through.

He planned poorly. Left himself six days worth of rations when he should have planned for 12, for 24. Found himself without water on the 5th day of his hike and without food on his seventh,the Black Lion a steady 15 miles away.

He collapsed then. Frustration mounting. He hadn’t talked to anyone in seven days. He’d gone longer before. In the desert with only the stars for company, he’d gone weeks without speaking to another soul. Only his music to break up the monotony of each day. But it was different now, here in this seemingly endless jungle. He’d grown used to people again, their voices and their noise. Even if he was still working out a way to talk to them, he’d grown used to their presence.

And now he was alone again.

Then it happened. Like God smiling down at him for the first time in eighteen years, it happened. His Com crackled to life and he held his breath, waiting. Heart beating too fast in fear of disappointment.

“Hello?”

Keith closed his eyes and breathed, “H-hey.”

“Oh thank god!” Lance exploded, relief and cheer and everything positive and jolly smashed into that one phrase. And Keith could feel tears pooling in the corner of his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ages! But it took forever for me to get through. Blue’s a bit busted up.”

“Red isn’t doing too well either.” Keith cleared his throat and wiped at his tears, smearing mud on his cheeks. “And I don’t know where Shiro is.”

There was a moment of silence and then static, bright and piercing in his ear that left his heart pounding and his palms sweaty. “Lance!” Keith cried, pressing his hand against the left side of his helmet. “Lance, can you hear me?”

There were a few more moments of silence and then Lance came through, clear and bright. Keith let out a deep sigh of relief, leaning back to slump against the tree. “Sorry about that,” Lance said, “Moving too much can fuck up the system I’ve got going on.”

Keith didn’t reply. Somewhere nearby whatever passes for a bird on this planet took off into the air, shaking the trees around him as a few bugs flew past his face. His stomach growled.

“Well you’re pretty close to Shiro,” Lance said finally. “According to what I can see you’ve got about ten more miles to the east of where you are and you’ll be right on top of him.” There was another moment of silence and then he said, “Though why did you go that direction in the first place? Your lion is reading closer to Shiro than you are right now.”

Keith tried to speak. Opened his mouth but the words were caught in his throat and his throat was feeling funny and then he was breaking into tears. His stomach growled louder as he hunched over, pressing the forehead of his helmet into the muck under him. Lance was panicking in his ear, his voice sharp and piercing and grounding as Keith dug his hands into the space between his neck and helmet. His throat felt scraped raw around his sobs and he gasped for air, heaving hard.

“Hey!” Lance called, “I need you to breath with me, Kogane.” There was a sort of scramble on the other side of the coms and then Lance spoke again: “In and out. Can you do that for me? Take a deep breath in.”

Keith coughed around a sob as he did his best to breath in.

“Good, good,” Lance urged, “And now out.”

Keith breathed out and felt how thick his saliva was in his mouth. He spat.

“In.”

Keith took another deep breath.

“Out.”

Keith breathed out.

He doesn’t know how long Lance talks to him. Ticks. Doboshes. It didn’t matter. In the end he found himself leaning against the tree, breathing to Lance’s count until even that tapered off. Finally, when he thought he could control himself, Keith cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sorry,” he said, voice raw. And it sounded like he had been screaming. He might have been screaming.

“It’s okay,” came the instant reply, “It’s okay to not be okay sometimes.”

It sounded rehearsed and Keith smiled. Must be one of Hunk’s lines.

“But… thanks,” Keith said, standing up. His legs felt awful and weak. And his arms felt awful and weak. And his stomach growled. He needed to find food. Before he can go find Shiro, now that he had Lance to direct him, he needed to get food.

Lance chatted with him as he foraged. Scolded him when he admitted he had been hiking without food and water for a day or two. Laughed when he slipped on a muddy patch and fell ass forward down a hill until he ended up tangled in some brush, but only after Lance has checked to make sure he was okay. He found some berries that, according to his suit, weren’t poisonous and some water in a pond nearby that he was able to purify with an attachment on their utility suit that Keith hadn’t seen before. Apparently Hunk and Lance had spent their first night in space reading the survival manual.  It wasn’t perfect. He ached still. His body and his heart. His stomach was still hungry. Berries could only do so much, but according to Lance, there might be a few more rations in Red that he wasn’t aware of, so it would have to do for now.

When Lance wished him a good night as Keith tied himself to the top of the easiest tree to climb, he managed to be in a good mood when he said it back.

.

They fell into a routine after that. Lance, a steady constant in Keith’s ear as he walked. Keeping the mood bright. Keeping Keith sane.

It became easier and easier to talk as they moved. When Keith fell silent because he was out of breath or about to get too lost in his thoughts, Lance took over, telling him story after story of his life back home on Earth. How he’d met Hunk (roommates at the Garrison) and how he’d met Pidge (an incredibly awkward introduction in retrospect) and then further back. Stories about the antics he got into with his brother (he had three siblings and an uncle that might as well have been his brother, but apparently he was bound to get into the most trouble with Alex) or his sisters (Monica was supposed to be the voice of reason and often failed).

It put things in perspective.

His brashness, his loudness. His need for jokes. His attentiveness. The oldest of four. As they talk, Lance seemed to come together like a puzzle set. Keith thought back to that loud boy he knew from the Garrison and saw confidence instead of cockiness, joy instead of a need for attention.

There were pieces missing, of course. A few conversations in the quiet of a jungle world couldn’t let you learn everything about a person, but many conversations over the course of the six days it took to walk back certainly help you learn a lot.

And slowly Keith found himself opening up in return, matching story for story. Shenanigan for shenanigan. Found himself complaining about the disasters Shiro had saved him from on more than one occassion (like the time Keith accepted a bet to streak in front of Iverson’s office at midnight or piss on the dean’s door when he was halfway to drunk at two in the morning). And then, later, stories about his life before the Garrison, from time spent jumping from house to house, family to family. Stories about staying up late and watching the stars because it was the only constant in his life. He wondered if he was coming together for Lance too. Fitting together like just discovered puzzle pieces to make a better picture.

One night, as Keith climbed to the top of the nearest tree after another day of hiking, Lance’s promise of just a few more miles keeping him going as his bones begin to protest, Keith heard Lance asking, “Do you think we see the same stars?”

It was the first time they’d dared to voice the truth of their situation. The miles and miles and lightyears that could be separating them. Keith’s heart hurt. “I’m sure we are,” Keith whispered, staring up past the bushes to see the stars blinking down at him. Somewhere out there were his friends, was Lance. And he would find them. First Shiro, and then the others. One by one they’d come home together. “And if not, then we will be.”

“Do you see that bright yellow one?” Lance asked.

Keith scans the sky and lied, “Yeah...yeah I do.”

There was a soft chuckles on the other end of the Com. “I keep thinking that the ones around it look like a constellation.”

“Why don’t you describe it to me?” Keith asked, fighting back a yawn as he closed his eyes. Ready to picture whatever Lance told him. He wanted to see what Lance saw, even if just for a moment.

“Well…,” Lance started. And it wasn’t the first time Keith dozed off to the sound of his voice, steady in his ear.

.

The food is delicious as promised. Hunk outdoes himself, the labor of his love evident in every dish. And if the mood at the breakfast table is somber, that is no one’s fault really.

Keith pushes his food around his plate, only taking a bite when Shiro clears his throat. Swallowing after a moment, Keith says, “tastes good.”

Hunk offers a small smile before his eyes drop back to his plate.

The empty seat next to Keith seems to grow in presence with every tick.

“I’m done,” Pidge announces, breaking the silence. “I’m going to finish working on the living room TV if you need me.”

“Pidge,” Allura starts, “Our deadline…”

Shiro shakes his head and she falls silent.

“I’ll join you once I clean up,” Hunk says, standing up and collecting plates.

“I’ll help,” Allura stands quickly, doing everything she can to rush out of the room, short of running, after Hunk. Leaving only Keith, Shiro, and Coran, who is still picking at his plate as if miles away at the table.

“It’s after breakfast,” Keith says, crossing his arms. He takes a deep breath. He’s ready. He’s as ready as he’s going to be.

“Keith…” Shiro starts.

“I’m sorry.”

Keith makes a noise of surprise as he turns to look at Coran. “What?” It’s the first thing Coran has said all day.

“It’s my fault,” Coran continues as if in a trance. “I thought I’d kept the pods up to date.”

Shiro moves, coming around the table to place a warm steady hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“We’d barely managed to resuscitate him on planet,” Coran says, growing louder. “I was grateful I’d come. We managed to restart his heart.” Coran looks at Keith, eyes wet, “Please… you have to understand….”

“I understand,” Keith mumbles. Heart growing heavier and heavier.

“We got him on the ship.” Coran breaks eye contact to stare at his hands. “Humans bleed so much. Such an awful red. There… so much. And I--” Coran clears his throat, voice growing stronger. “I got him in a pod. We were certain… but there was an error. The cryo process did not complete before the healing process began...”

Coran takes a deep breath as Shiro grips Keith’s shoulder more tightly. “Shiro heard the screaming.” Coran is crying now, bright green tears falling into his cupped hands. Keith can’t watch.

Shaking off Shiro’s hands, he gets up and pulls Coran into a hug. The position is awkward as Keith drapes himself over the back of the chair, burying his face in the back of Coran’s neck.

He remembers Coran’s explanation. Why they had to go into cryostasis before the healing process began, that the cellular regeneration was a strain on the body at best while asleep, but torture while awake. The shock is enough to kill… and why couldn’t it have been Keith? He was less wounded. He had a higher pain tolerance. He could have taken it. He could have… if it meant Lance…

“We managed to move him to a new pod,” Coran says, squeezing the arms Keith had wrapped around his throat.

Keith’s brain stutters, stops. He sniffles, pulls back to stare at Shiro, who’s holding himself, and mumbles, “He’s alive.”

“We don’t know the damage… that, coupled with the existing oxygen deprivation…” Coran clarifies and Keith moves automatically to stare at the back of Coran’s head. “Humans are delicate.”

But Keith hears none of this. Can’t. Heart beating too fast. His hands feel clammy. His brain is stuck. Repeating. _He’s alive. He’s alive._ “He’s alive,” Keith repeats. He looks at Shiro as he starts crying, but these tears are different. They are tears of relief. “He’s alive!”

Shiro pulls him into a warm hug. His heart is beating too fast. “There’s hope,” Shiro corrects.

.

It’s only as he stares at the motionless body in the cryopod that Keith realizes what he means.

“We don’t know when he’ll wake up…” Coran gestures weakly to the panel on the side of the tube, a red infinity symbol sitting where the timer should be.

The three of them stand in mutual silence as they watch Lance.

Hope is cruel.

.

Keith reached Red and nearly collapsed from relief. She was still mostly off, but as he grew closer, he can feel a pressure in the back of his mind that had been missing for far too long. It wasn’t words. Red was far too weak for it. But it was more than enough.

He jogged into her open mouth and sighed, rolling his shoulders before throwing himself onto his chair with a sigh.

“Finally home, huh,” Lance was smiling on the other side. Keith could tell. “Now go relax. Take that shower you keep describing. I’m sure you smell awful.”

Keith laughed and nodded even though Lance couldn’t see him. Apparently there was a shower in the underbelly of Red that he didn’t know about. And he should really read those survival guides when he could. Slowly he started to undress, pulling off his shoes and breast plate and guards until he came to his helmet and froze. Lance had been somewhat quiet on the other side, just humming. A constant source of noise.

“Um…” Keith started and Lance stopped humming for a moment.

“Yeah?”

“I need to take my helmet off,” Keith finally said.

Keith waited and then Lance reassured him, “I promise I’ll still be here when you come back.” Keith didn’t say anything, looking down at his toes still wrapped in the full body underarmor.

“Keithy-boy….Samurai.”

And that has Keith focusing, humming back as he wonders where that nickname came from, “I know that…”

“I’ll be right here, Samurai,” Lance reassures him, “Ten minutes. That’s it.”

Keith bites his lip and takes a steadying breath, “Right… right. Okay.”

“Okay,” Lance echoes.

“Okay,” Keith reaffirms before he pulls off his helmet and peels off his bodysuit. Ten minutes. He can go ten minutes.

It’s the fastest shower he’s ever taken. When he manages to pull the helmet back on, hair barely dry, it’s to hear Lance humming on the other side. Something in Keith settles and he takes the deep breath, sitting down in the pilot chair. Maybe… maybe he could take a quick nap before moving again. Just a short one won’t hurt….

.

He woke to silence and the taste of sand in his mouth. Outside the window he saw stars eclipsed only by the few small clouds. He must have made a sound because suddenly Lance was there, voice sleepy, “Keith?”

“Lance,” Keith smiled, eyes barely staying open no matter how much he willed them not to close. He had things to do. Rations to find, a Black Paladin to find. Lance had said his systems were reading signs of life, but Keith needed to see for himself. Needed to know his big brother was okay. But for now, he quite liked the sight of the stars in the comfort of his pilot chair. At some point the chair had leaned back until it was almost lying flat. Red purred. Keith sighed, “This reminds me of the desert.”

Lance said nothing for a moment before prompting, “The desert?”

They had talked about a lot these past few the days, but Keith had always been careful to stay away from the desert: his lost year. But here, in the quiet with only Lance’s steady breathing in his ear, it was easy to feel vulnerable, to want to be vulnerable. He sighed again and closed his eyes. “I hate the desert,” Keith admitted. “It’s so boring and quiet there. No people. No changes. Just sand and rocks and more sand. At least here there are animals, you know… And,” Keith opened his eyes to stare at a bright yellow star, “And at least you’re here…”

Lance didn’t say anything and Keith hoped he was smiling. He missed his smile. Keith imagined he was. “I got used to being alone out there. But I hated it. It’s nice being out here with you all.”

There was a delay and then: “Even me?” Lance teased.

Keith laughed. “Especially you.”

Lance laughed and it rang bright and beautiful through the static of their coms. When Lance settled, he asked, “So how did you find my lovely lady Blue anyway?”

Keith shrugged even though Lance couldn’t see him and for a moment, a single moment, Keith imagined Lance here with him. “She saved my life. After getting kicked out of the Garrison, I didn’t know what to do with myself. No family. No Shiro. And then there she was….”

.

At some point they fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing.

.

Shiro sends him to bed the moment he finds Keith growing weak, tucked against his big brother attempting not to think.

“You need to rest,” Shiro mumbles. There is a moment of hesitation and Keith wants to reach out, beg Shiro to stay. He doesn’t want to be alone.

Instead, he wishes Shiro goodnight and quietly crawls into bed. He wakes knee deep in river water, cold, and aching. His limbs are like dead weight as he forces himself to shore. The jungle rises up to meet him and as he crawls onto the muddy shallows, he can only stare down at his makeshift basket filled with root vegetables. For one delirious moment, he wonders if it had all been a dream.

Except his helmet is gone.

Keith had very, very rarely taken off his helmet.

The walk back to camp takes too long. He knows this walk, recognises the foliage: the trees, the flowers, the empty birds nest. He bends down and picks up the same rock he had the first time. He knows it sits on his dresser in his room.

His heart sinks.

This is a dream.

He lets the basket fall from his shaking hands in favor of moving fast. Scrambling up the hill side and doing his best not to fall so he feels the bark digging into his palms and the rocks slipping under his feet. He wastes no time looking around the camp. He’s had this dream before.

“Shiro,” Keith screams, hauling himself up the mountain Black had crashed into. It feels steeper than he remembers, but he moves fast. Maybe this time… Maybe this time… He bites back a scream as he lands wrong, ankle hitting the floor at just the wrong angle. But he can’t let this stop him. Shiro… Shiro needs him.

He keeps running.

Black doesn’t waste time letting him in. Sometimes she does. If she blames him she will let him wait outside as Shiro screams for him. But this time she doesn’t.

The smell of blood is unmistakable. The floor is sticky with it. And as he limps forward he knows. He’s too late.

He takes Shiro’s hand as his knees give out. He’s crying, sobbing thick ugly tears. As if watching someone else he distinctly notes he’s always been an ugly crier.

He’s saying something, Keith realizes. Chanting. “Shiro. Shiro. Shiro. No, please.”

Shiro moves then, shifts so Keith looks up to see him open his mouth so Keith is scrambling to his feet to hear better. It smells worse this close. Like blood and piss and rot because Keith has been around enough death that even in his dreams he can’t forget the smell of a dying body. “Keith…”

“I’m here,” Keith sobs. “I’m right here, Shiro.”

There is blood leaking from the corner of Shiro’s mouth and Keith desperately puts pressure against the wound in Shiro’s side, less like the jagged claw marks he remembers and more like the wounds from a deadly blade. He knows it’s too late. It’s been too late from the moment he started dreaming.

“Why…” Shiro mumbles as he starts to slump back against the pilot seat. He’s dying. It'll be over soon. “Kei--.”

“I’m sorry” Keith begs, “I’m sorry, Shiro! I’m sorry!”

He watches the light leave Shiro’s eyes and screams.

.

He comes to with the feeling of hands on his body and lashes out before he can stop himself.

The minute he feels his fist connect, he jerks awake and apologises, “Oh my god, Lance. I’m so--,” he cuts off as he sees Pidge cradling her stomach by the side of his bed.

She flashes him an uncertain smile. “Way to go for the womb punch, asshole.”

He tries to smile back but he’s shaking too hard for it to be anything but fake. “...sorry…”

“Do you…” Pidge takes a deep breath and straightens up. Keith hopes she doesn’t bruise. He knows he packs a mean punch. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Keith slowly shakes his head, unable to meet her eyes. “Sorry Pidge.”

She sighs, deep and long. And that familiar feeling of guilt only grows. He’s sure his punch is going to bruise tomorrow.

“You never make it easy on yourself do you, Kogane,” Pidge mumbles, taking a seat next to him. “I miss him too, you know.”

“I know…” Keith mumbles. Of course he knows. He can see it on everyone’s faces. He can sense it in the tension in the air. He can hear it in the ever growing silence. Nothing is quite right with Lance gone.

“But I also get it,” Pidge says. “We all know how close you two are and…”

Keith snorts. “I’m being selfish. Lord knows Hunk needs support more than any of us.”

“Keith,” Pidge corrects lightly, carefully. “We know okay… It’s okay to be selfish right now.”

“Know what?” Keith frowns.

Pidge stares at him for a moment, eyebrows furrowed. “You… seriously?”

Keith crosses his arms. “What?” What is she talking about? Selfish? How can he be selfish when the others are hurting too? And if his treacherous mind thinks of abs and legs, quiet moments under starlight, funny moments with friends, and holding Lance’s hand in the defeat after a valiant poker game then he shoves those memories to the back of his mind because now isn’t the time to think of those things.

She puts her hands on her face and groans, pulling down on her cheeks. “I’m not dealing with this right now. It’s too late...or early. Or whatever.”

“Pidge?”

She turns to Keith and shares a soft smile. “It’s going to be okay. Do you want me to walk you to Shiro’s?”

Keith pouts for a moment before nodding. Yeah… he doesn’t want to be alone. And Pidge needs to sleep.

“Okay.” She gets up and stretches. “Let’s go, space cowboy.”

Keith figures he’s asked enough questions tonight.

The walk to Shiro’s door is brief. The walk past Lance’s silent room is heartbreaking.

“He’ll be okay, right?” Keith asks as Pidge moves to knock on Shiro’s door.

She hesitates for a moment. “Yes,” she says finally, “Yes. I think he will be.”

.

Keith was hiking towards Shiro, Lance acting as a wonderful GPS, when it happened. “Someone is here,” Lance hissed.

“Lance?” Keith cried, freezing mid step to look around as if he could see Lance’s threat. And he had never felt so useless when he heard the fear in Lance’s voice.

“I think they have Blue surrounded,” Lance told him. “I...I have to go.”

“No! Lance!” Keith cried again when he heard Lance moving. There was a sharp static noise before his com went dead. “Lance!” Keith screamed. Somewhere a flock of birds flew away as he moved to mess with the controls on his helmet.

“Oh come on!” he yelled at the static. He fidgets for a moment with the controls, desperate to call Lance back, to somehow get back in touch before admitting defeat.

Stupid fucking Lance…

“You better be okay, asshole,” Keith hissed as he started walking again, Lance’s directions still clear in his mind.

.

Two days passed before he saw the Black Lion in the distance, its bright red wings breaking through the foliage like a welcome home sign.

His com stayed unnaturally silent as he just kept moving.

.

Lance came back on the third night. Keith was close now, could see the Black Lion half buried in a mountain of sorts when he stopped for rest. His body was aching again. And his stomach growled. He’d forgotten to eat that day. But at least his water pouch was still full.

His com crackled to life as he finished tying himself to the trunk, not wanting to risk falling out of the tree when he falls asleep, “Lance!” Keith shouted before remembering himself. “Lance? Is that you?”

There was another moment of silence and then a sharp crackling sound before Lance whispered, “Hey… Can’t talk long. They are monitoring me.”

“They?” Keith cried, “Who the fuck are they? Are you safe? Are you okay?”

“I’m safe,” Lance hissed. “Find Shiro. If I…” There was a break in communication and then Lance came back. “Gotta go. I’ll get you when I can.”

Keith had a hard time sleeping that night.

.

He reached Shiro in silence. There was a camp at Black’s feet. A fresh fire recently stamped out that reminded him for a moment of the camping trips Shiro would take him on and it made breathing easier. Fresh fires meant Shiro had been here recently, meant he was moving around, meant he was relatively okay. (Relatively, because who knew what qualified for okay on this planet? Keith certainly wasn’t okay--when was the last time he slept? Ate?--but at least he was functioning).

The problem only came when Keith couldn’t find him. He checked the Black Lion first, hiked up the remainder of the mountain to get inside. Black lay on her side, mouth unhinged. Her ramp was splotched with blood and her inside was no better. He made his way slowly, pushing his hands together to fight the urge to fidget, to run. Crimson was smeared across the floor and seat. Red handprints smeared on the controls and red splatters lead out. The smell was horrendous, bitter and acidic in the back of his mouth. He gagged and swallowed, forced himself to look closer. The dashboard was busted. The communication system down. The tracking system just as useless.

When he stumbled out into fresh air, he forced himself to take a few deep breaths. He bit his lip to keep from screaming as he desperately wiped the blood off his gloves. He couldn’t panic. There was no need to panic. Right? Shiro made that campfire, right? That was probably old blood from old wounds. It’d been two movements since then. That blood was old. It must be.

He repeated it to himself as he climbed down the mountain until he believed it: “ _Shiro is fine. Shiro is fine_.” He checked the campsite in an attempt to see where Shiro might have gone, but he honestly didn’t know what he was looking for. He’d never bothered to hunt for animals. How was he supposed to know what was a sign a person had been through and what was just some of the wildlife?

Finally he took a deep breath and forced himself to sit. If this was Shiro’s campsite then he would come back, right? After all, his lion was here. His campsite was here? Somewhere around here must be the majority of his supplies.

Shiro would come back. Shiro would be alright.

.

Time drags on.

He’s benched and grounded. The cryopod had done what it does best, and he is healed. But his body is still fragile, still mostly human. It will take a few weeks of careful moving for his body to catch up to the fact that it is healed and ready to go. For now, phantom aches follow him. Sometimes barely a whisper. Sometimes strong enough to leave him curled up on the floor, breathing slow.

Shiro watches him, hovers close by when he can. But Allura does not have the luxury of letting them rest for long. With two paladins down and Coran left to ensure the castle does not fall apart around their ears, the others rotate in and out of the castle like clockwork, running off to diplomatic meetings and finishing simple missions to ensure their allies were pleased and well taken care of. The politics of war is often the largest hurdle.

So the times when Shiro is not doing his best to keep Keith bedridden, Keith finds himself listless. Bored and half out of his mind with constant stress and worry. Is Shiro okay? Is Pidge sleeping enough? Has Hunk eaten? Does Allura need help? Will… will Lance wake up?

Keith finds himself in front of Lance’s pod often. No matter what he does or where his mind wanders, his feet always lead him back here. Sometimes he is alone. Most times he finds Coran hovering nearby, his work contained to a tablet as he keeps a steady eye on the pod.

And then one day he finds Hunk.

“Hey,” Keith greets. The worst part about the cryopods is that you can see inside of them. He knows why. For logistical reasons Coran needs to be able to constantly monitor the patient in case of emergencies. No piece of technology is perfect. Even now, Coran is standing by, working on something on his tablet, probably managing supplies or calls or treaties. Coran, Keith is fairly certain, is the only reason this ship hasn’t fallen apart. Oh, Pidge and Hunk might help with the quintant-to-quintant fixer uppers and upgrades and updates, but Coran picks up the tasks no one thinks about to keep everything running. Even from here Keith can see the dark circles.

And he’s sure whatever guilt Coran harbors has left him as sleepless as it has left Keith.

“H-,” Hunk clears his throat. “Hi.” His voice is soft, barely above a whisper, and if Keith wasn’t sitting so close he wouldn’t have heard Hunk at all.

“How you holding up?” Keith asks. They have not talked much. When Hunk is around, Keith is often asleep. Not on purpose, but simply because the mechanic has become more and more of a night owl, working diligently on the many projects needed around the castle and for the war. Last Keith had noted while looking through the debriefings Shiro had left in his room--he was no longer allowed at the weekly meetings in fear that the stress would set back his recovery, according to Shiro--Pidge and Hunk had managed to finish the explosives and updating the communication system in their suits with the help of the Romians.

Keith looks away from Hunk to the cryopod in front of them. If it weren’t for the fact that Keith can see the steady rise and fall of Lance’s chest, the cryopods would remind Keith of coffins.

Hunk shrugs, a slow heavy movement, like he was bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I should be asking you that.”

“I’m all fixed up,” Keith says, patting his abdomen. “And Lance ended up worse.”

Hunk snorts but there is nothing funny about it. It sounds bitter. “Yeah… He does that.”

Keith bites his lip and fights the urge to point out that Hunk is just as likely to end up in the pod. Now isn’t the time. “He’ll be okay,” Keith reassures Hunk just as he remembers how Pidge reassured him. “We just have to wait. Another day or two? A week? However long it takes. But he’ll be okay.”

Hunk is silent and Keith waits. Focuses on the steady hum of the ship and the machines and Coran puttering in the background. “I’m going to kill him when he gets out,” Hunk finally says and then, “Thank you for bringing him home.”

Keith swallows hard and tries not to remember how faint Lance’s breathing had felt, tries not to remember the smell of blood in the air. Does his best to forget the drag of time. “Of course.”

.

It was Lance’s voice that woke him the next morning. The sun was barely shining through the trees. From his vantage point, the camp looked just as dead as when he’d arrived. “I made it!” Lance cheered from over the coms.

Keith grunted and went to rub the sleep from his eyes before he was reminded he was wearing a helmet. “Did what?”

“So remember how I told you there were people?” Lance asked, “Well, turns out I crash-landed on their super secret moon base and they were going to kill me.”

“This isn’t making me feel better,” Keith said dryly, climbing to his feet to stretch. His back hurt. But what didn’t these days? _Wait… Kill?_

“Yeah, apparently they’re like a super secret group of assassins who’ve agreed to train me now that I passed their like three super secret super hard tests!” Lance continued merrily, his voice almost artificially excited as he continued. “So now they’ve agreed to help me patch up Blue and help you guys!”

“Are you okay?” Keith asked.

There was a moment of silence before Lance laughed, “Of course, I a-”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith cut him off, stressing the name in the hopes that Lance would get it. This whole time he was worried about Lance and he had been right to be. And he still was worried. “Is it not safe to talk?”

Lance said nothing and then, “Oh yeah! You’ll have to meet my friends here.” Lance laughed again and only now could Keith hear the fakeness of it. The way it faltered on the edges. “I think you’ll love them. Minu is just as obsessed with knives and swords as you are. You can show off your collection.”

Keith bit his lip and took a deep breath. “I can’t wait to meet them when I see you again. Do you know how long it’ll take to fix Blue?”

“Just a few movements,” Lance reassured him. “That’s what they tell me.”

 _I don’t know,_ Keith heard. “Okay, Lance. I can’t wait. Once I find Shi-”

There was a brief clanging noise and then Lance said quickly, “I have to run. Talk when I can.”

Keith was getting used to Lance hanging up on him.

.

Keith falls into a routine that week. Sleep. Eat. Sleep. Wake. Walk the Castle. Find himself in front of Lance’s pod far too often and for far too long. Get dragged away for lunch or dinner or a snack or movie time or team bonding, before finding himself in front of Lance’s pod again until stress and fear and the general ache in his bones forces him back to sleep.

It doesn’t take long for Shiro to find out.

“This isn’t healthy.”

It’s the first thing Shiro has said to him upon returning from his mission on Evos and Keith already knows he’s in for a lecture as he leans against the glass of Lance’s cryopod. From this angle he cannot see the same steady infinity number on the screen. “When’s the last time you’ve gone to the library or watched a… a TV show without it being mandatory?”

 

Keith shrugs. The glass feels nice against his back. He looks away and to the side. For a moment he thinks he sees Pidge peeking around the corner. Nosy.

“Keith.” Shiro snaps, drawing his attention. “You cannot do this to yourself.”

“Shiro…” Keith tries.

“Keith,” Shiro cuts him off. “Please.”

Keith closes his eyes and bites his lip. He knows Shiro is right but… but…

Shiro takes his hand and squeezes. Keith looks up to meet his eyes. “Please, Keith.”

His eyes are watering - the beginning of tears. Keith doesn’t understand. There is something else; something he is too tired to understand. “Okay,” he relents. He lets himself be pulled away from the glass.

He doesn’t want to make Shiro cry.

.

Keith was slowly building up the fire when Shiro returned.

It was almost night now and he had managed to find some rations stored away in the back of Black that just need to be heated up. It took two false starts before he managed to get a flame going and now he was just waiting for the water to heat up, occasionally stroking the fire with a stick because he didn’t know what else to do. Mind wandering, worry only increasing as he waited. Worry for Lance and whatever mess he seemed to have gotten himself mixed up in. Worry for Shiro and all that blood in the cockpit. It had been two days, right? Why hadn’t Shiro come back? It was as he was debating leaving, potentially running blind into the woods from the urgent need to just do _something_ when Shiro returned.

He was hobbling, clutching at his left side in obvious pain and a grimace that only gives way when Shiro finally noticed Keith. “Keith!” he cried, moving as if to rush forward before remembering his wounds.

“What’s wrong?” Keith shouted, dropping his stick before scrambling up, nearly stepping in the fire as he rushes to get to Shiro. There was blood under his hands and it was only spreading; Keith pulled Shiro up, doing his best to support Shiro’s weight and pressed a hand against the wound in an attempt to keep the pressure. “What happened?” he asked as he helped Shiro to one of the makeshift benches that Keith had created.

Shiro grunted as he sat, breathing hard. There was a tear in his suit that Shiro had attempted to patch up with gauze and bandages, but first aid has never been Shiro’s forte. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Keith’s either. “The druid,” Shiro explained, “It just...isn’t closing.”

Which… _don’t panic_ , Keith thought as he slowly pushed Shiro’s arm away. The wound looked painful but clean. He tried to think back to whatever medical training he had. Nothing green or oozy. A strange purple glow seemed to be coming from the edges but at this point in Keith’s life, he’d learned to tackle one battle at a time. “How are you moving with that?” he asked.

Shiro laughed, and it was bitter. “High pain tolerance.”

...Right.

Luckily Shiro had enough first aid supplies to last a month. It took too long for Keith to get up the cliff face and grab everything he needed but when he got back, Shiro was sitting more comfortably against the log in front of the fire, focusing on his breathing. “Black was fully stocked,” Shiro explained as Keith dropped the stuff and pulled out the first aid kit, “And this clear stuff manages to act as a pretty good sealant so I don’t bleed out.”

“Thank god,” Keith said as he applied some to the wound. He didn’t want to look at it; he can barely look at it. Instead he swallowed hard and focused on how strange it was to be wearing essentially two pairs of gloves: his suit’s and then the plastic-like gloves that came in the kit. The clear goop was acting like glue, keeping the wound from growing any larger. He stretched his fingers out and watched it ooze slowly before continuing to apply it. “Because I have no idea how to stitch wounds.”

Shiro laughed. “I’d probably bleed out under an hour in that case.”

Keith shot him a sour look and considered, for half a second, poking the wound before remembering how much pain Shiro must be in. “I’m sure the others are looking for us,” Keith said instead, “And then we can just throw your stupid ass in a healing pod and everything will be right as rain.”

Shiro hummed his agreement before hissing as Keith applied the last of the goop to the largest cut.

“So what were you doing out there?” Keith asked when they’re all done and he unrolled Shiro’s bedding (apparently Black had a sleeping bag and Keith had to wonder where his went. Maybe the Galra took it when they got Red?) and helped Shiro into it. The food was done and Keith distributed the meal into fourths and put half of it away for later. He handed Shiro the bigger portion and pretended to play dumb when Shiro tried to hand it back.

“Your dot wasn’t moving,” Shiro said, carefully spooning some of the yellow goop into his mouth. It tasted, Keith decided, sweet and sour. Not the worst thing that could have happened. He’d found some berries and nuts during his hike that would probably bulk it up if he could just remember where…. “After a few hours I got worried and went after you.”

“My navigation system has been messed up too,” Keith said, “Was leading me away before Lance was able to get in contact with me.”

“Lance?” Shiro asked, “Is he alright?”

Keith fought down that familiar panic and tried to shrug. “I don’t… know. He’s safe for now, but apparently he’s being monitored.”

“Next time you get him on the line I want to know,” Shiro ordered and Keith nodded. “If he can get to us then it’ll be easier when Allura finds us.”

Keith finished off the rest of his dinner in silence and then sighed, setting the bowl down on the log he was sitting on. “Do you… do you think everyone is okay?”

Shiro didn’t say anything for a moment and Keith looked up to see him looking away, chest moving steadily up and down. Keith turned back to the first aid kit. Maybe there was something for pain in there?

“I hope so,” Shiro said finally in a too quiet voice as Keith pulled out a bottle with a label that translated to “Pain Relief.”

Keith passed him two pills and some of his water. “I’m sure they are,” Keith decided. If not for himself, then for Shiro. “I bet Hunk and Pidge are working on how to find us right now while Coran drives them crazy.”

Shiro laughed before hissing in pain again, carefully taking the pills from Keith’s hand. “I’m sure Allura is keeping them on task.”

“Oh I’m sure!” Keith smiled, taking back the water and moving to sit on Shiro’s uninjured side. Shiro pulled him in for a one armed hug as the fire crackled in front of them. Keith was going to need to add more fuel soon if they wanted it to last the night. But for now he was content to melt against Shiro.

 _He’s here_ , Keith thought. _He’s here and safe and I can take care of him now. Everything is going to be okay_. “We’re going to be okay,” Keith mumbled, trying not to think about Lance.

Shiro mumbled something in return, already half asleep.

Keith settled in for the night watch.

 _Take care of yourself_ , he thought to the stars. _Please._

.

The nightmares do not stop. Sometimes they’re kind enough to leave Keith asleep, simply suffering until the dream comes to an abrupt halt. Others leave him screaming and thrashing only to wake up to Shiro holding him down, tears in his eyes.

It has been a long time since a mission has affected him so severely.

It hadn’t been like this since the early days, after their first fights. Sendak. The Balmera. Battles so much easier relative to the hardships they’ve fought through since losing each other in the wormhole and yet far more scarring. His first tastes of violence. His first victories and losses in battle. He still remembers the first time he felt his sword sink into flesh. It hadn’t registered at the time, not until the heat of battle had settled and they were flying back to the castle that he had realized he’d just killed a man. An alien but still a man.

A person with hopes and dreams, with a future and a past, a… a family. And he’d remembered bitterly the line he’d thrown so casually in Pidge’s face, “Everyone has families.” He’d been sick then, thrown himself out of Red’s seat to have the decency to vomit on the hanger floor. It’d been Lance who’d helped keep him steady, who’d helped talk him down until he was no longer hysterical, red faced and sobbing. It’d been Lance who’d walked him to his room, who’d sat outside his bedroom until he’d felt human enough to come out. It’d been Lance who’d woken him from that first nightmare, dark circles giving away the secret that Lance had spent the whole night keeping watch just to lull him back to sleep when he’d needed.

It’d been routine after that for Lance to wake him from one of his nightmares, even as they lessened from nightly to weekly to rarely.

Now his nightmares are just reminders of everything he’s lost.

Five weeks after they… came back, Keith wakes before Shiro. Finds himself breathless. Skin crawling, hands shaking. He needs to leave, needs to run. The blankets feel like shackles. Shiro’s steady warmth just another reminder of something else he can lose.

He more runs than walks out of bed, more sprints down the halls. He needs space. He needs something. For a moment he thinks about turning around, rushing to the healing pod, before the fear of seeing Lance still and lifeless keeps him moving forward. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle it right now.

He’ll do something like scream. And that’ll wake Red up. And if Red wakes up then Black will wake up. And if Black wakes up then Shiro will wake up. And Shiro deserves to sleep more than any of them.

So that’s why he finds himself in the kitchen, clutching a glass of water in shaking hands when Allura comes in.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” Allura asks.

“Aren’t _you_ supposed to be sleeping?” Keith repeats.

She stares at him for a moment before smiling sadly, “Yes. I imagine Shiro will be quite disappointed in us come morning.”

Keith frowns and then looks back at his glass. He’s too tired to play Allura’s mind games. Which is why he’s far too surprised when she passes him a glass of something bright orange and faintly fruity in smell. He takes it and swirls the glass before looking up to see her pouring herself a glass from a wine bottle. “You humans can hold your ethanol correct?” she answers in place of explanation. “I think I’m in the mood for a drinking buddy.”

Keith stares down at the glass and makes the executive decision to make a bad decision. He knocks back the glass like he would a shot, wiping the excess from his lips with the back of his hand before sliding the glass back to Allura. “Let’s get fucked.”

.

They migrate to the living room sofas, push the majority of the pillows onto the floor with the understanding they’d be in charge of cleaning it up in the morning. Allura puts on the music. Keith gets the blankets.

“Do you ever think we’ll win this?” Allura asks around her second glass. Keith is starting to feel that familiar warmth, the place where everything turns golden and crisp. Where his problems start to feel less real.

“Yes,” Keith says. He’s never once doubted their cause, their inevitable win. They’re the good guys. The Galra are the bad guys. Simple. But… “But that doesn’t mean we’ll all be there to see it.”

There is a moment of silence as Keith and Allura throw back another glass before Allura sets the bottle down. No reason to black out just yet. Keith knows his limits. “I’m sorry,” Allura whispers, “For not getting there sooner.”

“You got there,” Keith answers. “We got him in a cryo pod. And then we got him in a better cryo pod. Now it’s just a matter of him waking up.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough,” Allura admits. “When I was carrying you out and Hunk was holding Lance… all I could think was I’d lost another family. Keith…” She bites her lip and then looks back down at her glass. “I do not know if I want to win this war if we do not all survive it.”

Keith takes a deep breath and lets himself go boneless on the sofa. The liquid courage in his veins leaving him relaxed and far too open. “If someone has to die I hope it’s me.”

Allura laughs bitterly, “From what I’ve seen it seems we are most likely to lose a few legs.”

Keith snorts and accepts another glass.

“Do you…” Allura starts.

“He’ll wake up,” Keith corrects. He doesn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. “He’ll wake up and it’ll be fine and everything will go back to normal. Pidge will stop working herself into an early grave. Hunk will stop stress cooking. I’ll be able to sleep and Shiro won’t be… so hovering and stifling and Shiro. And you and I won’t need alcohol to sleep. It’ll… it’ll all go back to normal.”

Allura nods slowly, “I apologize. I should not have implied. I know it is not possible, to consider the death of a lover.”

Keith frowns. “What?”It comes out harsher than he intends, sharper on the “t.” He sits up to stare wide-eyed at Allura.

“I had thought,” Allura says slowly, clearly startled. She takes a moment to pour the last glass and gather her thoughts. It’d been a varga at most and they’d already finished the bottle. At least Allura had more. “You two were already lovers.”

“Lovers? Me and Lance?” Keith cries before shaking his head. “No… Lance… I mean-- I’m not. I don’t have feelings for Lance.”

Allura waits.

“I mean…” He swallows hard, throat suddenly far too dry. “I do… I care for him. But he doesn’t… I could never. With Voltron and all. Like he’s very attractive--I mean,” he laughs to the point of snorting, cheeks far too warm, “I like... Wow. I would if... But he would never. And it’s not like I’m in love with him. It’s just a crush, you know. I wouldn’t… I.”

She quietly pops open the next bottle, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She laughs and finally manages to pop the cork. “Yeah. Okay. You don’t like him. I was clearly wrong.”

He has a terrible feeling she doesn’t believe him. But he might also be too drunk to care.

“I recorded the latest episode of Sin Sign the other day if you’re interested,” she suggests as a peace offering.

Keith frowns for a moment. His head feels foggy. His thoughts slow. He’s probably going to hit that point of passing out soon. He shifts until he’s leaning against her, can feel her too light, fluffy, white-purple hair against the back of his neck and settles in. “I think Becham did it.”

“As you humans would say, bullshit. It’s clearly Al’gach.”

.

Time passed.

Keith found a routine.

After a three-varga nap, he spent his mornings reapplying Shiro’s bandages. Then, he climbed the rock face up to Black to grab that day’s breakfast before climbing back down. He fixed up the fire and heated the water and made them food. He fed Shiro on bad days and helped him feed himself on good days.

Then he would make lunch. On good days Shiro would come with him to the nearby river. On bad, Shiro would go back to sleep. Keith gathered the mushrooms and berries and nuts they’d confirmed were good to eat. At first, he’d tried fishing but it took too long and wasted too many resources. Besides, only Shiro knew how to debone a fish and Keith wasn’t going to let him move that arm too much. It was around that time of day that Lance tended to call.

While Keith made his way back to camp, arms full of his makeshift baskets, Lance would call him and give him an update. Brief two-to-three word-long sentences at a time. Sometimes more. Sometimes they were lucky enough to have whole conversations.

The first time Lance called, Keith raced back to Shiro and did his best to act as a translator. Unfortunately, his helmet didn’t fit Shiro’s head.

“He says he’s safe,” Keith said as Lance talked in his ear.

“Tell Shiro I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to you guys but I was given a tour of the medical facilities. I’m going to try and figure out what we need to heal a druid’s magic,” Lance said.

Keith relayed it to Shiro.

Shiro took a deep breath of relief and then asked, “What can Lance tells us about where he is?”

Keith repeated the question.

“The Sisterhood is a private organization that goes where the money goes, “ Lance answered and it was obvious that he was picking his words carefully. “They apparently like my shooting. If I run a few jobs for them they’ll fix up Blue.”

“Are they with the Galra?” Keith asked.

Shrio frowned and Keith held up a finger to signal him to wait.

“No,” Lance said, “but so far they’ve… been lenient with the information I’ve been given. It’s best it stays that way, I think.”

Keith repeated all of this for Shiro who only frowned more. “Have they already made progress on Blue?”

Lance was silent for a moment and Keith shushed Shiro as he sent Keith another annoyed look. “Yeah…” Lance said finally. “I can hear her more than I could before. But she’s… she’s not great.”

“Keep yourself safe,” Keith commanded, “I’m guessing you have to go.”

“I’ll call when I can,” Lance reassured him before the connection cut out.

That was how their conversations tended to end--abruptly and leaving them with more questions than answers. Where did Lance always have to run off to? Who iwa near him? Was he as safe as he said? Had they made progress on Blue? What work were they making Lance do?

As time went on, Keith started to notice the strain in Lance’s voice, the way he spoke too quickly or too little. Keith found himself talking more often than not, filling in the spaces Lance left behind as whatever was happening forced him to curl in on himself. Keith started talking about things he rarely ever did just to fill in the silence and keep some semblance of normalcy. His past. His hopes for the future.

“What do you want to do when we get home?” Keith asked one day. He rarely thought about Earth anymore and when he did it was bittersweet. The people he cares about he found in space. But sometimes when he does think about a future after the war, he can see them--older and happier, walking through the city, chatting and laughing. Allura with her hair down to hide her ears, marveling at the wonders of Earth Culture while Coran goes on and on about how that thing reminds him of something he saw when he was young. Pidge would barely get off her phone because he knew how much she misses the internet. And Hunk barely doing better. Maybe Lance would bring his family, faces Keith had only seen during mind melds but who all look friendly and welcoming and very much like Lance. Shiro… Keith can’t wait to see Shiro come home, to see him relax, to eat a home-cooked meal like they’d talked about before the mission to Kerberos had taken off.

(Mrs. Shirogane had passed away a few weeks after the Garrison had announced the news of Shiro’s passing. They say it was heartbreak. Keith still hadn’t found a way to tell Shiro.)

“I want to see my mother,” Lance said as Keith squated down to fill his basket with the blue berries he’d found on this planet that tasted a bit like turnip. “I want to eat earth food and blast my music and go dancing in the rain. I want to show everyone all my favorite places on Earth. Like the beach near my grandmother’s beach house and the best pizza shop in Miami.”

“I look forward to it,” Keith said, mechanically picking the berries as he focused on the smile he could hear in Lance’s voice. “I’d love to see the family that…” He paused for emphasis, “Raised this.”

Lance laughed and it rendered Keith motionless for a moment. It had been too long since he’d head Lance laugh like that. “Shut your face, Mulletman. We all know you like this!”

And...yeah. Keith guessed that was true. _When had that happened?_ Keith laughed, cheeks flushing an uncomfortable red. He was glad Shiro wasn’t there to tease him. “You’re tolerable.”

He was nearly done for the day. He wished he could carry more--the calorie quantity of the things he could find was too little for them to not eat as much as they can and Keith was doing his best to ration what they have. He knew he had more meal packs back with Red ( she grumbled slightly in his ear, still too distant and too quiet for it to feel anything but wrong. But she was getting better. All he could do was have faith). But the hike would leave Shiro alone for too long, something Keith wasn’t willing to risk unless completely necessary.

“You know…” Lance said after a moment, “I’m really glad I found you.”

Keith smiled, “Yeah… I’m really glad you found me too. I… I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you. I don’t know what Shiro would have done without you.”

“Keith…”

“I just…” Keith shrugged before starting the walk back to camp, “I don’t think I’ve said thank you yet.”

“You don’t need to,” Lance said. There was a sharp noise in the background and Keith knew Lance needed to leave soon. Their time was always too limited. “I’m just… happy you two have each other.”

“You’ll get here soon,” Keith hurried to say. There were voices other than Lance’s coming over the com. Lance would have to leave now. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

“I’ll do my best,” Lance quickly whispered.

The line cut.

.

Keith woke to the sound of whispers, barely there in the corner of his consciousness. “Hmmm,” he groaned, rolling over to peer through slitted eyes up and up at the stars above the canopy. Shiro, in his peripheral, continued to sleep easily through the night, his bandages holding.

“Did I wake you?” came the whispers again. “Shit… Sorry.”

The voice sounded shaky, scared. It was enough to convince Keith to claw his way to proper consciousness so his eyes could open far enough to spy the barely-there light of the sun making its way above the trees. “Lance?” he mumbled, voice still heavy with sleep.

There was a hiccup and then the sound of something hitting wood before Lance replied, sniffling. “Hey Keith.”

“Mmmm… what’s going on?” Keith asked. “Lance… It’s night time.”

“Yeah. I figured, buddy. Sorry about that,” Lance chuckled but it sounded off. Sad. This would be important in the morning, he thought, but for now Keith could do nothing more than note it. He was too tired to think clearly.

When was the last time he’d slept instead of napped?

“Do you… what’s wrong?” At least Keith had the sense to know something was off.

“It’s nothing buddy,” Lance replied. “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow. Good night.”

Keith frowned but relented. He was tried. Sleep… sleep sounded nice. “Good night, Lance.”

“Good night, Samurai.”

.

Keith wakes to the sound of something very large and very metal slamming into the table next to him.

“Motherfucker!” he cries, before immediately regretting it,  gritting his teeth as if that can keep the splitting headache at bay. His mouth tastes like cotton. He refuses to open his eyes because he’s been here before and the light is already too bright behind his eyelids. And everything from his toes to the tips of his hair wants to disintegrate into dust.

He’s hungover.

Great.

“You awake?”

And to top it off… Shiro is pissed at him.

Even better.

Keith hisses in some poor rendition of a cat and does his best to curl away from the light despite the fact that Shiro is quick to strip away his blankets. From somewhere off to his side, he hears Allura ask if he’s alright.

“This tends to happen to humans who consume unsafe amounts of alcohol,” Shiro explains. Which… come on? Alteans didn’t get hangovers? That is so unfair. First the super strength and the shape shifting and now this? Why couldn’t he have been half-Altean instead?

“Oh…” Allura says, sounding far too prim and proper for someone he remembers in explicit detail crying over a shitty soap opera a few hours ago. “Well should I ask Coran to prepare a cryopod? It seems he’s in a great deal of pain.”

Considering how bright the lights were and how loud Shiro is being, pain could be considered an understatement.

“No,” Shiro says, “We should let this run it’s course. Maybe next time he’ll think better about getting drunk.”

There is a moment of blessed silence before Allura whispers, “Don’t be too cross with him, Shiro. It was my idea.”

“An idea he should have refused,” Shiro snaps before turning his attention back to Keith. “You planning to wake up and vomit or what?”

Keith grunts before slowly sitting up. “I don’t need to throw up,” he says and he’s proud of how human he sounds.

“Good. Then come to the kitchen. You need to rehydrate.” Well… Keith has been at war long enough to know a command when he hears one.

Which is why he finds himself munching on leftovers as Shiro refills his glass for the third time. The longer he’s awake the more human he feels. The more he eats the more alive he feels. And the more he drinks the less his brain wants to kill him. Overall, he feels better.

Doesn’t change the fact that he still feels like shit.

And as he watches Shiro pace around the kitchen, banging cupboard doors too hard or letting the water run for too long, he can feel the tension rise in the air. Then he opens his stupid mouth. “Are you going to be pissed all day?”

Shiro pauses for a moment before gently settling the pot he’d just finished washing down on the shelf. There is a moment, Keith realizes, where he can see Shiro deciding what to do next before turning to face him.

“Yes,” Shiro says, voice far too low and posture far too closed off.

Keith wants to take the words left hanging like grenades in the air and stuff them back in his mouth. Instead he continues talking, “I don’t get why you’re so angry.”

“You’re hungover,” Shiro says as if he’s picking his words carefully.

 _Stop talking_. “So? I’m not dead.”

There is a moment of tense silence before Shiro calmly sets the rag down. “Keith, you should rest now.”

“No Shiro,” Keith snaps, “we should talk about this.”

“You’re hungover; you’re angry,” Shiro says keeping the same careful, steady tone. “We can talk about whatever we need to talk about once you’re not hungover.”

“If you cared about that you would have let me get in the pod,” Keith argues. He watches Shiro flinch and feels his anger only grow. “I’m not fucking dead, Shiro!”

“Not yet!” Shiro snaps back and it catches them both by surprise. Whatever dam that had been holding Shiro back is now broken. “But you seem hell bent on trying.”

“I-”

Shiro cuts him off. “If its not throwing yourself head first into danger than it’s this. Not eating. Not sleeping. Not taking care of yourself or relaxing or talking to anyone!” How many times have you ended up in that goddamn tube? How many times before it’s enough? Before it’s too late? You almost died, Keith!”

Shiro takes a deep breath. “And now _this_?” His voice cracks as he grips the counter. “Drinking? Don’t think I didn’t notice all those beer cans back in your shack. I was there a day but it wasn’t subtle.”

Keith tries to cut in, to defend himself. “It’s not like that!”

“Bullshit!” Shiro growls. “Bull-fucking-shit, Keith. I know you. You’re not an idiot. We’ve already lost Lance. We don’t need you hell bent on joining him in an early grave.”

But Keith isn’t isn’t paying attention anymore. “Lance isn’t dead,” Keith hisses.

It’s quiet enough to make Shiro pause. “What?”

“Lance isn’t dead.” Keith repeats. His head is pounding but he’s never felt so sober. “Lance isn’t dead.”

“Of course,” Shiro throws his hands up in the air as if asking for strength. “Of course that’s what you focus on.”

“How can you say that?” Keith continues, not hearing Shiro. “How can you give up on him like that?”

“Oh don’t act like I don’t care about him,” Shiro snaps back. In the doorway Keith spies Pidge, Hunk, and Coran watching with wide eyes. Nosy assholes. “Just because you’re in love with him doesn’t mean you’re the only one hurting.”

“I’m not--,” Keith claws at his hair. His head hurts. It hurts and he doesn’t want to be here anymore. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. He doesn’t… “I’m not in love. I-I know that. I know everyone is-is hurting.”

“Then act like it,” Shiro steam rolls on, either unaware or unconcerned. Keith wants to leave. He wants to… “The rest of us aren’t acting like death is eminent. We’re trying, Keith! We have a universe to save and you- you…”

“Just because you couldn’t protect me doesn’t mean you get to control me now.”

There is a moment of silence. Shiro freezes. Keith freezes. From the doorway, he thinks he hears Pidge gasp. Keith doesn’t know why he said it; he regrets it the moment it leaves his mouth. Honestly, he regrets ever opening his mouth.

“Go to bed, Keith,” Shiro says, finally breaking the silence. He sounds… tired. “Let’s just--just go to bed.”

Yeah… that’s probably for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO!! Chapter two is done. Sorta...ish. Okay so what happened is I had chapter two written, all 12k of it. But I wasn't satisfied so I started to rewrite portions until I simply rewrote the entire thing. But as I was writing I noticed the word count growing and growing and growing. And basically, the original chapter 2 was 20k+ with more to be written so that is why the chapter number has increased to 3. 
> 
> As always please let me know what you think! I really appreciate your feedback and theories!
> 
> Shoutout to my betas:  
> [ Fabulousanima ](http://fabulousanima.tumblr.com/) | [ Onoheiwa ](https://onoheiwa.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Art by me! I've never drawn anything for my fics before but I drew it for klangst-week because I couldn't get that scene out of my head.
> 
> More Notes:
> 
> If you'd like to know more about what's going on with my story please consider following me at my new writing tumblr [ TheQueen117 ](https://thequeen117.tumblr.com/) where I'll be posting excerpts of fanfic and original work as well as taking prompts.
> 
> I am hosting another Big Bang!! This one dedicated to Shiro. For more information please check out the tumblr [ VoltronBigBang ](http://voltronbigbang.tumblr.com/). We are currently taking writing sign ups until May 15, 2017 if interested.
> 
> Finally, I am also making a Lance-centric Zine with a few friends called Starboy: An Unofficial Voltron ZIne. For more information about that please check out our tumblr [ LanceZine ](http://lancezine.tumblr.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

Keith was hiking through the forest when Lance mentioned, quietly, “I’m glad you ended up where you did.”

“Oh?” Keith asked as he begins to scale up one of the taller trees in the area. He’d been going for a while now and he wanted to check that he wasn’t too far from Shiro. Today wasn’t a great day, but it wasn’t a bad day either. Shiro’d even taken up woodcarving to kill time while Keith ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.  But there was no reason not to be cautious. 

It had been Shiro’s idea for him to go on a hike. Even tired, Keith could tell he had enough nervous energy running through him to let him run a marathon. No wonder Shiro could pick up on it. Honestly he just needed some space, some breathing room to worry without worrying Shiro.

“No animal attacks. No crazy locals. Water and food and shelter,” Lance listed off. “It’s a pretty friendly planet all things considered.”

Keith took a moment to knock on the tree he was climbing. “Knock on wood, Lance,” Keith said. “Don’t want to jinx us.”

After a moment Keith heard a few solid thumps. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Keith joked.

“Huh… Yeah. I guess you’re right,” Lance said, sounding genuinely surprised.

Keith snorted, “Do you think you’ll remember this bonding moment?”

Lance laughed, loud and bright and as close to his normal laugh as Keith was likely to hear out here. “Dude, this whole trip has been nothing but a bonding moment.”

.

Then one day, his body finally remembers it’s healed.

It takes him a moment to realize, sipping a cup of coffee in the early morning when the majority of the team is still fast asleep and Pidge is sitting at the kitchen counter, staring blankly ahead. He’s half-way through his second cup when he notices he doesn’t feel the need to sit down or to move carefully. The ache that he’d carried so long in his bones that he’d forgotten what it was like to move without pain has finally faded away. 

Allura wastes no time putting him to work once he informs her.

It’s a simple hit and run. Intel has hinted at political unrest on the Galra home planet and there’s hope that the Galra will be moving their ships along the border to deal with it. Pidge and Keith’s job is to look for anything interesting that could help the alliance plan for any potential openings in the Galra defense by hitting the military posts along the border between occupied and free space.

Usually Keith ran these sorts of missions with Lance. 

He does his best not to think about that. 

When Hunk and Shiro come to see them off, it’s stunted. Words said and unsaid hang heavy over both of their heads, leaving them with a feeling of unease that has carried through over the last few days till now. So when Shiro steps into the hanger Keith hesitates before walking forward. And when Shiro leans over for a hug, Keith holds on just a little tighter. 

“Stay safe,” Shiro says when Keith, pulls away. It’s been days since their argument and Shiro hasn’t been sleeping well. Keith can tell. There is a weight on his shoulders; the slightest tremor in his hands. 

Keith looks away. “See you… soon.”

Shiro nods.

For a moment neither say anything and then Keith turns on his heel and walks away. 

What else can he do?

.

“So you and Shiro…” Pidge starts.

They’re cruising right now, Green making a wide birth around the citadel that held the base they were targeting—one of the last Galra strongholds along this edge of the border, left purposefully to ensure easy access to intel. They know this base like the back of their hand after the many, many times they’ve managed to break in undetected.

(The Galra have always been—ideally, would always be—too confident, too assured in their inevitable conquest, that they had become sloppy. Keith supposes ten thousand years of undisturbed conquest would do that to someone. Their arrogance, more than anything, will be their downfall.)

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Keith cuts her off. He glares first at the floor and then out into Space where the blackness between the stars grows larger and larger. She’s not looking at the screen in front of him, not the way he is anyway. She’s looking through Green’s eyes and beyond to the quintessence of the natural universe flowing in and around them. She’d once described it as vines arching their way across the sky, tying one star to the next. Broken only along common travel routes or where Zarkon and his druids had purposefully drained them. Now he stares and tries to see what she sees.

“It’s not going to help anyone,” she sighs, steering Green past an invisible obstacle before dipping them back down. The time called fifteen doboshes. Keith’s hand went to his bayard. “You and him ignoring this.”

“I know,” Keith says and he does. He knows he’s being stubborn – that Shiro is being stubborn. But that was the problem with stubborn people. Just because they knew they were wrong didn’t mean they had an easy time admitting it.

(Lance would have thrown a fit by now and forced them into a room to talk about it. Hunk would too if not for the fact that Hunk is still… preoccupied. He’s been obsessively upgrading the castle since Lance went down. Barely talking to anyone and floating from room to room, distant. It’s only gotten worse since he and Shiro had started fighting.)

“You need to fix this,” she says. Pidge readies Green and they start their descent. “You were both awful to each other but you need to fix this.”

Keith slips his helmet on. “I know.”

.

For once a mission goes right.

The guard rotations had been as expected. The sentries marching to the steady four tick count Shiro had discovered all those months ago. The key codes respond to Pidge’s program. The galra general stays off base just like they’d been told he would. After the last mission Keith was on it’s honestly a blessing.

Pidge is mining the communication feed as Keith stands watch when she says, “Maybe you two should take a break.”

“Pidge.”

She shrugs and looks away from the computer just long enough to stare Keith down before looking back. “Go to Koris. Get something to eat. Shop. Make a day of it. It’ll be good. Healthy. When’s the last time you two just hung out and had fun?”

“Pidge…” Keith glances down the hallway. Coast still clear. Five doboshes until the next rotation. “As much as that sounds fun—and it does—Allura’s not just going to give us the afternoon.”

“But what if she did,” Pidge argues. “I bet I could convince her.”

“I really don’t think—“

“Keith,” Pidge stops him. “It really sucks watching your family fight. Take it from someone who's not lucky enough to have a brother around to fight with.”

_ Ah. _

“Don’t let this go on for too long,” she finishes, closing her laptop.

Keith doesn’t know how to respond to that. “I’m sorry.”

She stands and stretches. Two doboshes until the next patrol comes around. “Fix this,” she says. “That’s all I want.”

.

Keith watched as Shiro carefully made his way back to his log. “Are you sure I can’t…”

“Keith,” Shiro replied with an unfair amount of patience. “Please. I am not dying.”

“Yet,” Keith fired back before settling down on his own seat. If needed, he’d step in, but today had been a good day so far. No reason to worry or not let Shiro exercise a bit while he could. Who knew what tomorrow would bring?

“Yet,” Shiro agreed, smiling. “But until that happens I’m sure I can feed myself some soup with a spoon.”

“If you’re hurting at all…” Keith warned. In front of him the fire crackles on, the steady heat leaving him feeling rather peaceful for once. He’d had a chance to bathe earlier today in the creek. And with Shiro feeling well enough they’d been able to bring back more food. For once, he had no plans of going to sleep hungry.

“I’ll tell you,” Shiro promised. “Now eat before I eat it for you.”

Well… Keith had been at war long enough to know a command when he heard one.

It was as he’d been going for his second bowl of soup—second because they could afford to take seconds and when did his life become an Oliver Twist parody?—that he got the call from Lance. It wasn’t unusual to get calls from Lance during the day. In fact it was necessary and in many cases, Keith looked forward to it.  But they had a pattern. They didn’t just call whenever they wanted because Lance had made it clear that he couldn’t afford to, that he wasn’t safe enough to take any calls from Keith that weren’t planned ahead.

So when the call came, Keith knew something was wrong.

Shiro took one look at his face and frowned. “He wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t an emergency.”

Keith set his bowl to the side and accepted. “Hey?”

It took him a moment to realize the static he was hearing was crying. “Lance?” Keith called, standing as if he could run to where Lance was. “Lance? Are you hurt? Can you talk? Lance?”

Shiro looked at him with wide worried eyes and Keith shook his head, terrified. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t… What could they do? If Lance was injured and dying and taking his last breaths, what could they do trapped in this jungle, on this planet?

He’d never felt so useless.

“I-Keith,” Lance choked out, voice weak and wavering and awful to listen to. Lance wasn’t supposed to cry. Some people could make crying beautiful, could sound and look enchanting when crying. Lance wasn’t those people. Lance was supposed to be happy. He had a face for big goofy smiles and a wonderful, loud laugh. He wasn’t made to cry.

“Lance?” Keith asked. “Can you talk? Are you safe?”

“Keith,” Lance gasped, “I d-did something horrible.”

“Horrible?” Keith probed while gesturing to Shiro to wait a moment.

“I just killed someone, Keith.”

Oh no. 

Keith remembered the first time he’d killed a person, had felt his sword sink into the soft flesh of someone’s throat and known he could never come back from that single, solitary moment. Lance, a distance fighter, had probably never had that same realization. Maybe he’d killed people before now—most likely he had—but it was easy to pretend every soldier they came across was a drone when you were looking through a scope, sometimes miles away. 

Lance had been the one to comfort him the day he killed someone for the first time, had held his hand and kept watch over his nightmares. Now it seemed it was Keith’s turn. 

Shiro watched him and mouthed ‘What?’ Keith pressed his finger to his mouth in the universal call for silence. He’d explain later. Right now… Right now Lance needed him. 

“Lance…” Keith struggled for words, making his way towards the edge of the camp for some semblance of privacy. “It’s- You had to, Lance. It’s going to be okay, Lance.”

“No!” Lance cried. “I don’t… I don’t want to become like them, Keith. It can’t be okay. It can’t.”

Keith tucked away his questions about  _ them _ and focused. “No, Lance,” he tried again. “I’m not saying it’s going to stop hurting, but…” He briefly considered calling for Shiro but Lance had called him (had always called him and Keith had never wondered why when he had Shiro’s number too) “We’re at war, Lance. Sometimes we don’t have a choice. And over time, we… I got used to that. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. But...This is war. Would you say I didn’t have a choice? When I…”

“It’s different,” Lance argued, sniffling. Keith wondered where he was, if he was safe. Somewhere private. He hoped so. 

“How?” Keith pushed. “Would you if you hadn’t had to?”

Lance was silent for a moment, broken sobs coming across the line before he said, “No.”

Keith took a deep breath. “This is war. Making our peace with that can… help.”

“But…” Lance argued, “I didn’t do it on a battlefield. I-He was just sleeping, Keith. He was and they said I ha-had to if I wanted Blue…”

“You wouldn’t have if you didn’t have to,” Keith repeated. “But you have to survive, Lance. You have to come home. You have to find us. Remember?” Keith pressed. “Remember, Lance?”

There was silence and slowly Keith could hear Lance calm down. He blew his nose and Keith smiled despite the seriousness. Same old Lance. “Survival is important in war.”

“I… I…,” Lance seemed to struggle to word what he wanted to say and Keith waited until he heard Lance sigh, “I don’t want to be okay with this.” 

“You don’t have to be, Lance.” Keith reassured. “Not being okay with it means we’re still good people. But we have to move on.”

There was another moment of silence and Keith wondered if he was helping or hurting.

“I’m scared, Keith,” Lance finally confessed.

Keith closed his eyes. “Blue will get fixed soon and you’ll be allowed to leave,” he promised–an empty promise because what did he know? “Soon.”

“Soon.” 

. 

It made sense that if one thing went wrong, everything would go wrong, right?

It was three days later, as Keith was applying the altean goop that had been keeping Shiro alive, that he realized something had gone truly, horribly wrong. 

It was the smell. Sour and wrong. Like food gone ripe and then past that. It made him pause, fingers coated and starting to itch as the goop dried. Shiro looked at him and smiled sadly. “It’s starting to itch.”

Keith supposed it was only a matter of time. They were in a jungle. Humidity. Dirt. Sweat… They’d been so careful. He closed his eyes and breathed slow. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to die here. He didn’t want Shiro to die here. 

(And he wanted to go home. To the Castle of the Lions and then beyond that. He wanted to go to Earth. He wanted to sit in Ms. Shirogane’s house and eat her baklava and listen to her and Shiro argue in a mix of Pashto and Japanese and English because that’s what happened in a trilingual house. And he wanted to go back to two years ago when they were all together and she wasn’t dead and her son wasn’t dying. And. And…

And he still hadn’t told Shiro his mother had died from heartbreak in the year he was gone and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to, not now. Not when he needed Shiro to fight to stay alive. Not when he thinks Shiro won’t make it off this planet.)

“What do we do now?” Keith asked, pressing his fingers to the wound to finish applying the goop before reaching for the bandages. 

Shiro took a deep breath and shrugged. “Wait I suppose. I- I don’t know what else we can do, Keith.”

“Lance will come,” Keith promised. Promised because he had to. He had to believe. “And then everything will be okay. You’ll get better.”

He finished applying the bandages and let Shiro pull him in for a hug. “Yeah,” Shiro promises. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Keith knew he was lying. He appreciated it anyway.

.

Allura hosts their debriefing two days later. Shiro and Keith take their seats next to each other. He’s been hiding in his room these past few days when Allura isn't sending him out on recon and patrol missions--eager it seems to make up for the weeks he’d been on bedrest, forced off duty. His busyness  a convenient excuse for why he hasn’t spoken to Shiro yet. 

It’s easier to say he doesn’t have the time when it’s true.

Pidge takes her seat across from him. She looks disappointed, probably in him.

(Most likely in him.)

Coran arrives last, signaling the beginning of the meeting. He seems chipper this morning. That’s good. Like Hunk, Coran has been a ghost of himself, guilt from Lance’s situation following him like a dark shadow. Even now Keith can see the dark circles under his eyes. Nightmares are a common occurrence on a ship full of soldiers. 

“The intel we’ve received over these past few weeks,” General Toldick says from his position on the screen, (and it seems Atlira is oddly absent, the screens only showing four of the five rebel generals), “it is promising your majesty.”

Allura glances at her paladins and then picks up a sheet of paper. “The documents Red and Green collected from the Beta Sigma port tell us there are rumors of unrest in the Capital. Is that true?”

General Boh’Tch shakes her head, long braids falling from her bun to frame her face. “Our spies are not that far reaching.” She pauses before suggesting, “Perhaps if the Blade were willing…”

“I’d rather not work with Galra,” General Duncan spits out.

Suddenly Shiro’s hand finds his shoulder and Allura has risen to her full height, towering above them all at nine feet tall. But before she can defend him, Shiro speaks out of turn. “I would remind you to speak carefully, Duncan. Or should we remind you of the last battle Red flew in?”

Duncan stares at them for a moment, pointedly glaring at Keith, before slowly bowing his head. “My apologies, Red Paladin. Your Majesty.”

Keith nods, opting to say nothing as Shiro returns to his seat and Allura returns to her original form. 

“You know very well it is not a matter of our willingness,” Bol’Tch states, bringing them back to order. 

General Venphill sneers before glancing to the side, skin flashing its fatal gold. 

“But rather,” Bol’Tch continues, “their willingness to work with us.”

“They are our allies,” Allura assures, tone leaving little room for argument. “As we have shown in past battles,  _ our  _ allies have always been willing to come to our aid when called. I will speak to Kolivan.”

“Kolivan,” Duncan sneers, unable or unwilling to refuse the bait. “I see you are on a first name basis, Your Majesty.”

“Check your attitude, Duncan,” Venphill snaps before addressing Allura. “If the Galra traitors will aid us, we welcome all allies Voltron makes in our effort to free the universe.”

“Let us not forget our true enemy,” Toldith says, calm as ever. “Especially now with Lotor’s return.”

“Lotor?” Hunk asks, the first Keith has heard him speak all day. “He’s not in our packets.”

Toldith nods, expression grim, “I did not want to needlessly worry Her Majesty. But information from our contacts on colony Sigma Epsilon tell us that preparations are being made.” He dips his head low so that Keith could no longer see his eyes. “Zarkon’s bastard returns.”

.

The meeting comes to an uneasy close soon after; the team’s mood souring after Allura storms off with demands for space. They watch her go before Pidge catches his eye and nods towards where Shiro is speaking to an ashen-faced Coran, most likely demanding to know what is going on. Shiro, more than all of them, did not like being blindsided, especially not in front of the Free Rebellions - allies with the potential of turning as soon as they think Voltron is no longer useful. 

Keith considers it before he loses his nerve. He justifies it with the desire not to worsen Shiro’s mood. In his heart of hearts, he knows he’s wrong but he can’t find the will to correct himself. 

So he makes his escape quietly before finding his way towards one of the upper observation decks, a favorite of Lance’s and a place they’d go often to sit in silence.

He’s never argued with Shiro, never about anything that mattered. He doesn’t know what to do to make it right. 

And then, after ten doboshes of Keith sitting in silence, curled up in one of the large blankets Lance and Pidge liked to store in here, Hunk finds him. With him, he brings a plate of cookies and a pillow.

“Figured you’d want the company,” Hunk explains.

Keith snorts but accepts the excuse and the cookie. “Thanks.”

“So you and Shiro, huh,” Hunk says, voice flat.

“You don’t have to do this,” Keith cuts off, gesturing between the two of them. “Going through the motions. I know you’re not in the best place either.”

Hunk says nothing and they sit in silence. Keith watches as Hunk takes a cookie and breaks it into smaller and smaller pieces until they disintegrate in his hands, sweet dust. Not once does he eat one. Keith looks away to the stars above. 

“Then you know what to do then?” Hunk finally says.

“We’ve never fought like this,” Keith admits.

Hunk hums and then says, “The first time Lance and I fought we weren’t friends. He’s awful when he wants to be. He’s quick to jump to assumptions. I’d just moved in late and apparently the last thing he’d wanted was a roommate. He’d already made all sorts of assumptions about what kind of person I was going to be before I got there.”

Keith snorts and closes his eyes.  _ That sounded familiar.  _

But… but Keith can admit he can do the same at times… He thinks for a moment, to all the uncharitable things he’d thought about Lance before he got to know him on that jungle planet, to all the sour thoughts he’d had about Shiro the first time they’d met, already assuming the worse. Allura did always say the red and blue paladins had more in common than they realized.

“It took us a while to figure it out. He apologized. We became best friends. But I was lonely,” Hunk sighs. “The first time he brought a date back to the room, I freaked out. Got mad. I’m not actually that great at making friends. I was convinced Lance was going to leave me and I lashed out.”

Keith fiddled with the edge of the blanket and shrugged. “Why are you tell me this?”

“Because we didn’t talk for a week and I figured that was the end of it,” Hunk laughs, bitter. “And then he came to me and apologized, convinced it was all his fault. We talked. We got better.”

“So I should just talk to Shiro?” Keith guesses.

“Yeah. I mean duh, dude,” Hunk smiles. “You’re like… emotionally stunted sometimes. Not an idiot, but- um... but what I’m trying to say is… okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Remember that time I told you not to let jealousy ruin the relationships that are important to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Same goes for pride.” Hunk turns to Keith and takes his hand, squeezing. “I’m not taking sides. You both said the wrong thing. But if Lance can teach us anything it’s that we don’t have a lot of time.”

Keith stares, wide-eyed, as Hunk pushes the plate of cookies towards him, crumbs spilling over the edge. “I never apologized to Lance for that fight. Not really. I wish I had when I had the chance. I hope I will, one day soon. But…” He stands up and looks up, towards the stars. “Don’t leave any more regrets, Keith. You don’t know when tomorrow might not come.”

. 

That night he couldn’t sleep. The sounds he would normally attribute to the birds and bugs of this planet growing louder and louder until he was suffocating under the sound of his own beating heartbeat and Shiro’s labored breathing. The knowledge that their countdown had just sped up - that tomorrow he could wake to find Shiro dead and gone, his strength falling to the infection creeping under his skin -  left him too terrified to close his eyes in case he missed it.

(If he could have nothing else he would have that: the chance to say goodbye. The chance to cradle Shiro close to his chest and feel the last heartbeats of the only family he’d ever had fade away.)

When he couldn’t lay there any longer, he crawled out of the tent. He stood. He stretched and reached for the sky, poking at that place in his mind where Red rested in a desperate attempt to see if he could do anything to fix this god-awful situation they’d literally crash landed into only to find  _ painregretguilt _ as Red did her best to heal herself in the midst of a foreign jungle, alone without family or home or pilot. Far, far away from her natural elements of fire and lava. 

_ We’re going to die out here,  _ Keith thought, looking soberly up at this planet’s moons. If Shiro died then he didn’t want to keep going. Not again. He couldn’t do another year in the desert. Better to.. Better to…

The direction of his own thoughts scared him. He needed to talk to someone before he did something stupid. He needed to talk to-to… but Shiro needed to rest.

He called Lance.

“Pick up,” Keith begged, his teeth clenched and hands flat against his helmet, as if that would somehow help strengthen the signal. “Pick up, please.”

It was only after the fourth ring that Lance picked up. But when Keith opened his mouth to speak, he was cut off by the sound of screaming. Keith stumbled, nearly scattering their fire pit before finding his footing.

“That’s how you do it,” he heard someone - a woman? - say across the line as the sound tapered off. “You have to be direct. If your hands waiver or you hesitate you can kill them instead of hurt them. Is that clear, Cadet?”

Keith heard the sniffling, the barely-there sign that Lance was holding back tears, when he spoke. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now pay attention,” she said. There were sounds of movement, the faintest rustling of fabric as Lance did something, maybe moved towards the woman? “Do you see this?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lance repeated, in that same broken, awful voice.

Keith bit his lip, debating, and then spoke. “Hey, Lance.”

If Lance heard him, he gave nothing away. 

Keith took a deep breath. In the background, he could still hear the woman talking. Occasionally, a scream would follow. A question would be asked. An answer refused. It wasn’t hard to guess what was going on. “I’m going to keep talking if you want me to, okay?” Keith asked. “Just focus on my voice, Lance. Just try, for me. I know what’s going on must be so, so scary. But it’ll end soon. It’ll be okay. Can you give me a sign that you want me to keep talking or do you want me to hang up?”

There was a moment of brief silence while Keith chewed on hips lip and then Lance whispered, “Keep going.”

“Ha!” the woman called. “I knew you’d get the hang of it, cadet. That’s why you’re my favorite. Just wait, in a few weeks, maybe, you’ll be running these missions by yourself.”

He heard Lance’s breath stutter, a choked-off sob. Keith wasted no time launching into an old story. Something about the time his foster brother, Jamie, and he getting into trouble messing with their foster father’s motorcycle while playing road pirates like in Mad Max. It was a story he’d told before, to Shiro and some of his Garrison friends. It was easier to speak above the screams of a dying man when he didn’t have to think about it.

In the end, when the screaming stopped and the woman got what she wanted and Lance was allowed to leave and Keith stopped talking, Keith realized he was crying. He touched his cheek in awe as he listened to the sounds of Lance moving until Lance had made it to, what Keith assumed, was a safe place. 

And then Lance spoke, quietly. “Thank you, Keith.”

The glass in front of his eyes was blurry from his own crying. “Of course, Lance.”

There was a moment of silence where they both just listened to the sound of each other’s breathing, unsure where they went from here. And then, “I can’t stay here, Keith,” Lance confessed. “I don’t… I don’t like who I’m becoming here.”

“Then don’t.” Keith said, like it was that easy when he knew very well it wasn’t. But he needed Lance and Lance didn’t want to stay and he had just listened to a man scream for far too long while he waited for Shiro’s breathing to stop. 

He didn’t want to live like this anymore. 

There was a part of him, a stupid hopeful part, that thought if Lance came then everything would magically be okay. And another, defeated and hopeless, that whispered that there was nothing left to save. And then another, a part he actually believed in, that knew that if Lance came then they might have a fighting chance of walking away from all this with only scars. 

“Shiro isn’t doing better,” Keith confessed. “His wound isn’t healing, Lance. We need you here.”

Lance was sobbing now, big, thick noises and Keith closed his eyes. “I’m coming,” Lance promised when he could catch his breath. “I can’t… I’m coming. I don’t want to become one of them, Keith.”

“If I ever find these Sisters, I’ll wring their fucking necks,” Keith swore. 

It was a sign of how far they’d come that Lance didn’t object. 

“Is Blue healed?” Keith asked, because hopes and dreams were good but truths were truths. And the truth was they couldn’t leave without their Lions, didn’t have a fighting chance if Blue couldn’t fly. (Most days Keith did his best not to wonder what happened to the rest of the team.)

“She will be,” Lance promised.

“Lance…”

“Keith,” Lance cut him off, “do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Keith said, looking to the tent where Shiro was resting, as if there could ever be any doubt. “With our lives.”

.

It’s as Keith sits on the floor of the observation room, long past dinner, that he gives himself the time to think and think and realize, with growing dread, why Pidge had said “we all know” and what Hunk truly meant by “any more regret.”

.

One week later, as he was making dinner over the crackle of a new fire, he got the call. 

“It’s Lance,” Keith called to Shiro before picking up. It’d been a bad day. A bad, bad day where Shiro could barely find the strength to sit up, let alone speak, and he only nodded his head slightly to indicate that he heard. Keith hadn’t dared to step away from the fire today and so dinner was rations they couldn’t afford to use. Red rumbled slightly in the back of his head, a reminder that she had more if he could make the walk (if  _ she  _ could make the walk.)

(She was growing stronger but they were also running out of time.)

“Hey Keith…” Lance started. There was gunfire in the background. The sound of explosions and the shouts of soldiers, of people. It shook him, the contrast - his life and Lance’s. His peaceful jungle verses Lance’s active battlefield and he wondered, briefly, which one of them had it worse. Maybe neither? Maybe both? Could you compare? Both… both honestly just sucked. “I’m really glad we became friends.”

Keith took a deep breath and stared at where Shiro rested against a wooden log. It was time then. “Why does that feel like a goodbye?” 

Lance laughed and, for an honest-to-god moment, Keith though it was genuine before the rattle of a machine gun carried it away. “Because it’s true, of course.”

“What have you done, McClain?” Keith asked, smiling despite himself. When had this become his life?

“Oh, you know…” Lance said and if Keith closed his eyes he could see Lance shrugging with that same stupid smirk on his face like this wasn’t hell, like they weren’t all fucked. 

There was a sharp series of gunshots and a moment of silence before he heard Lance start running. “Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah, Lance?” Keith asked, walking over to where Shiro sat, their water heating in the pot. He suddenly found it very hard to care about dinner. Shiro was watching him now through barely open eyes.

“I mean it though,” Lance said, voice serious. Keith wondered, distantly, if he had been injured. “I’m glad we could become friends. I- back at the Garrison…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith cut him off. “None of that matters now. I wasn’t a saint either. I’m glad I got to meet you.”

There was a brief moment of silence before Keith heard something like the slamming of a heavy door. “I’ll see you soon, right?” Lance asked. Keith wondered if he was in Blue’s hanger, wondered if he was going to be safe now.

“Of course,” Keith promised (and what was one more promise he didn’t know if he could keep?). “I’ll be waiting.”

.

Six vargas later, as Keith watched Lance descend from the clouds - Lance calling out to him over the Com and Shiro still miraculously alive at his side - Blue glinting in the sunlight, he could admit with an unwavering certainty that it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

.

_ Oh. _

_ Well then... _

_ Honestly _ , Keith thinks. It’s a little embarrassing it’s taken him this long to admit it.

.

It’s not hard to swallow his pride after that. 

He stops by Hunk’s room on his way to Shiro’s for a hug and a smile of encouragement because he’s still terrified of making everything ten times worse. But Hunk is right. He doesn’t know if tomorrow is guaranteed. Not with their lifestyle. And he’s already accumulated enough regrets. 

He finds Shiro dressed for sleep in his black (color coded) pajamas, make up gone, prosthetic off, and hair pinned back. Keith feels guilty for disturbing Shiro’s rest before reaffirming his need to be here. He stands straight, looks Shiro in the eye and says, “We need to talk.”

Shiro lets him in without a word.

Shiro’s room is a mess of memories, knick-knacks and antiques and a collection of stolen stones litter his dresser and desk, signs of places he has been. Keith picks up a glossy yellow stone from Shiro’s nightstand, a cousin to the one that sits in his own. A reminder of the jungle that had almost been their grave.

“You know,” Keith says, turning to Shiro who’s taken a seat on his bed, cross-legged, his black lion slippers thrown to the side. “I didn’t know I was in love with Lance.”

“Keith…” Shiro starts.

Keith shakes his head. “Let me explain, please.”

Shiro settles. Keith takes a deep breath. “I mean I… I knew in a way. I thought it was a crush. Lance is pretty and smart and can throw a really mean right hook.” Keith shrugs, a little self conscious. “You know me. I have a type.”

Shiro laughs, startled, like he hadn’t meant to. “You always liked the ones who can handle themselves in a fight.”

Keith smiles. “Abhi was an MMA fighter. Lance is a Paladin of Voltron. It makes sense.”

Keith clears his throat. “But I thought it was a crush. I thought it’d go away. I had no plans to pursue it. I still don’t know if I should. We’re defenders of the Universe, I haven’t had the luxury to really think about it.”

Keith accepts the seat on the bed Shiro gestures to and is grateful when he doesn't try and hug him. “So when Lance got hurt, when he died in my arms…”

“Keith,” Shiro whispers, eyes closed.

“He sto-stopped breathing, Shiro.” Keith chokes out. “I knew… I-I could feel…” He takes a deep breath and ignores the stinging in his eyes. “I was hurting. And more than I thought I should be, more than I would have been if it had been anyone else. I kept thinking about how it felt like when you were… In the jungle.”

“Those nightmares came back,” Shiro mumbles.

Keith nods. “I know you all figured it out. Me and Lance,” Keith chuckles, weakly. “But you know me.”

“Emotionally constipated,” Shiro teases and Keith smiles, grateful that Shiro is still trying. “Yeah…”

“Yeah,’ Keith echoes. “So I’m sorry. It’s an explanation, not an excuse. You were right. I’m not the only one hurting. I shouldn’t have shut down like I did. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on the team by turning into an asshole. I had no right to say what I did in the kitchen.”

Keith looks Shiro in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Shiro nods and smiles, gentle and forgiving and everything Keith struggles to be. Sometimes in the bitterness of his own mind, Keith wonders how someone as good as Shiro managed to survive. But Hunk is right; jealousy is no reason to destroy a relationship, a brotherhood, as good as this.

And then Shiro does something Keith isn’t expecting. He apologizes.

“Shiro?”

“My turn, Keith,” Shiro says. “Please.”

Keith shuts up. How could he do anything else?

Shiro takes a deep breath. “The thing is… The thing is you weren’t completely wrong. I was scared, back in the kitchen. I-I’ve been scared for a while now.”

“Of course,” Keith reassures, “After the Galra…”

“Not for me,” Shiro scoffs, shaking his head. “I could care less about me, Keith. God. I’ve survived; it’s awful but I know I could do it again if I have to. No. I’m terrified of you.”

“Me?” Keith cries.

“I can’t protect you,” Shiro admits, clenching his hands in his lap. “In the jungle. In the mines. I go down and you pick up my mess when you shouldn’t have to. I should be better than this, stronger. For you. For the team. For the universe. I-I want to protect you.”

Shiro looks at him and Keith realizes in horror that he’s crying. “I still remember the first time you killed someone. I remember the way you were shaking, crying. I froze. I was standing right there and all I could think about was how I’d failed you. And then Lance stepped in and I was so grateful Keith, that you had him and he had you.”

“You came though,” Keith argues, unwilling to sit quiet and let Shiro demean himself. “You have always, always been there for me. Every moment of every day. And if sometimes you need help, well… we’re a team, right Shiro? That means I get to help you too!”

“It’s not just that,” Shiro continues, not listening. “I’m terrified about… about what will happen to you if something happens to me. We don’t live safe lives. And if anyone has to die, I want it to be me, Keith.”

Keith thinks back to the conversation he had with Allura and feels his stomach sour. “I don’t know if I want to win the war if it means losing you,” Keith repeats. 

Shiro rubs at his eyes, rubbing away the tears, and Keith reaches out for a hug. “I was there a day, Keith. I saw the life you lived that year I was gone...” He sniffles and accepts the hug, pulling Keith close. “You have a problem, Keith. If alcohol was more available on this ship I don’t… It’s not good. I had nightmares about you drinking yourself to death before I came home, lost out there in the desert. I’d have never known. I would have… I could have…” He takes a deep breath and squeezes Keith tighter. 

“So that’s why in the kitchen,” Keith whispers, pulling back to look at Shiro.

He nods. “I was angry at myself,” Shiro confesses. “And I was scared and I took it on you. I knew how you felt about Lance and I took it out on you because I wanted you to feel as bad as I did. It’s an explanation, not an excuse.”

Shiro takes a deep breath so Keith can feel his chest move underneath his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Keith.”

“I guess we were both idiots,” Keith says. 

They sit there for a while, the silence feeling more comfortable than anything else. When Shiro can, when his tears have dried up and he’s no longer clinging to Keith like a lifeline, he clears his throat and says, “Go. Get ready for bed. And then come back okay?”

Keith nods and hesitates for a moment before letting go. “I’m going to do my best you know.”

“Your best?” Shiro asks. 

“I don’t want you to die either,” Keith says. “So it’s only fair I don’t.” 

Shiro smiles. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

.

The next day, Keith spends with Shiro. 

For the first time in days, Keith wakes well rested. Shiro’s steady arms are around his stomach and he sighs, content. His nightmares had been bearable, brief, waking him once in the middle of the night only to give away to the kind of dreams you can never remember the next morning. 

“Why,” Shiro grumbles when Keith sits up, letting the sheets pool around his waist, “do you always insist on waking up so early?”

Keith laughs and shrugs. “Because I love tormenting you.”

Shiro snorts and smacks him in the back of the head with a pillow before turning over, demanding five more minutes.

By the time they manage to drag themselves to the kitchen it’s well into the day. Apparently Allura has forced Shiro on mandatory break time so he leaves his prosthetic off. The lack of strain on his shoulder is obvious. “Pidge and Hunk are trying to make a lighter one, but… there hasn’t been a lot of time,” he shrugs, sheepish, like it’s his fault.

Keith can admit it had taken him time to get used to Shiro without his prosthetic (sometimes it was easy to forget the things he had lost in the arena when it was covered by cloth and gloves) but now it barely phases him. He watches Shiro pour him a glass of green “orange” juice before grabbing a pan for eggs. 

“The castle takes precedence,” Shiro says taking a seat on the table.

“Makes sense.”

It’s as Keith is flipping the eggs that Allura arrive. She’s been oddly absent as well these past few days, and she looks haggard. Hair pulled up in a messy bun with smudges of makeup under her eyes like she’d forgotten it was there. 

“Eggs?” Keith offers.

She looks at him and then at Shiro and beams. And Keith is reminded, once again, that she really is one of the most beautiful people he’s ever met. “I see you two have made up.”

She gives Shiro a funny sort of look and he flushes bright red. “Did you take my advice?”

“He came to me, actually,” Shiro says looking rather proud, like Keith had done something special instead of necessary. 

She pouts and Keith wonders what they had talked about. She must have given Shiro the same kind of speech Pidge and Hunk had given him. He feels a flash of guilt as he plates the eggs (also green, like the ones in his children’s books), ashamed of how his behavior affected his team. They deserve better from him. He takes a deep breath and turns to Allura, eggs in hand and ready to apologise when she surprises him. 

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she tells Shiro. 

“What?” He frowns when he notices it is now Shiro who is wearing an odd look on his face. What is he missing here?

“Keith,” she says like a woman on a mission. Back straight and shoulders squared. “Could I speak to you in the hall for a moment?”

Keith follows Allura out, mourning the eggs that are bound to be frozen by the time he gets back (or maybe Shiro will eat them. Shiro will probably eat them.) and wondering what Allura could want. Was he in trouble? He didn’t think so… He was sorry but he hadn’t done anything to require a reprimanding. 

He’s about to preemptively apologize when Allura surprises him one more time. She apologizes. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “For…” She takes a deep breath and looks him straight in the eyes. “I hadn’t meant to cause any trouble between you and Shiro. I hadn’t been aware that ethanol could have such a negative impact in humans and I hadn’t known that it would upset Shiro as much as it had.” She’s fidgeting, playing with the strings of her shirt and Keith hesitates before reaching out to hold her hands. “I also should have known better,” she finishes, weakly. “I’m sorry.”

He squeezes her hand before letting go. “It’s not your fault, Allura. What happened between me and Shiro was complicated.”

“He said I had to ask you if I wanted to know the full story,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

He shrugs and glances down the hall. They’re alone but still… “It um…” It’s his turn to fidget before he forces himself to stand still, crossing his arms. “I should have known better,” he says finally. “On Earth… I don’t know about Alteans but on Earth people who consume too much alcohol can get addicted. It can ruin their lives. And I’ve always had a bad habit of drinking more than I should.”

He looks away, unable to meet her eyes. Ashamed. “When Shiro was taken it got worse. I started drinking too much and I didn’t want to admit it was a problem. Now that we’re in space it hasn’t been a problem because it’s been hard to get,” he shrugs. “Shiro got scared when he saw me drinking. And then I got defensive. We fought.”

He looks at her and shrugs again. “It’s not your fault Allura. It’s more complicated than that.”

“But I didn’t help,” she says leaving no room for argument. “On Altea we had our own vices. Alcohol does not affect us Alteans like it does you, it only lightens our mood, helps us forget our worries.” She pauses, and her eyes seem to go somewhere far away. “But there are other things that we can become addicted to and I have seen what they can do to people.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Keith says softly.

She shakes her head and offers him a reassuring smile. “It was a long time ago.”

“Still…” he fidgets and it is her turn to reach out.

“Thank you, Keith,” she smiles. “But that was then and this is now. I still… It’s hard to reject the things that call out to you. But… if there is anything I can do to help, just let me know. Okay?”

“Thank you, Allura,” Keith smiles. 

Slowly she opens her arms. “Thank you for trusting me.”

He doesn’t hesitate to accept the hug.

.

At some point after Allura and Shiro are pulled away by the ever-needy generals to deal with the latest political disaster, Keith lets his feet lead him to the med bay for the first time in days.

Hunk and Pidge are there, which would surprise no one. Their various projects and tools are spread out on the floor as if they were slowly moving their combined workshops upstairs.

“He won’t wake up anytime soon,” Keith points out, taking a seat next to them, careful not to touch any of the equipment or the tools. (The last time he’d made that mistake, Pidge had kicked him out). It takes them by surprise. Pidge raises an eyebrow, daring to look away from her computer while Hunk sends him a sad smile. 

It’s not something they expect him to say, not something he expects himself to say, not after how he’s been these past few weeks. But it’s the truth. And it’s time he faces that reality. Lance might not be okay. It’s terrifying acknowledging it out loud. Hunk nods as he finds a space on the floor and he does his best to take strength in that. 

“Then what are you doing here, asshole?” Pidge asks, barely looking up from her screen. To the side, Coran works diligently on one of his many projects, occasionally looking at the pod before looking away, back to his screen to press a few buttons.

“Same as you, I suppose.” Keith shrugs before pulling out his own tablet and flipping to his latest novel. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to be at peace with the fact that Lance might never wake up (hopes he won’t have to be) but at least he’s not alone. Not like then, in that jungle and before the garrison. And not even like when he was in the garrison and it was just him and Shiro. He has a team now. 

Lance might not wake up but… but maybe he’ll still be okay if they’re all here to take care of each other. It’ll be okay, somehow.

He settles in to read and wait.  

...

Lance falls in love between sips of alcohol while watching the stars, chatting about nothing and everything with a warm body pressed close to his.

He’d been exhausted that day. Bone-deep tired and weary and strung out and stretched thin between family and friends and classes. The knowledge that if he’s picked for fighter class, things are only going to get harder as he struggles to keep up. The knowledge that he’s only being considered for fighter class because his test scores had been close but not good enough, leaving him with the distinct knowledge that he is not worthy of his position. That by letting something as stupid as homesickness get in the way of his dream, he’d nearly lost everything he’d been working towards. 

So that night he sneaks out. He needs air. He needs space. Hunk hovers close, asks him if he’s sure as Lance grabs his hiking boots and a scarf to wrap around his face. He’s not going to be able to go into town for another week--the closest bus is too well observed and Lance is walking on thin ice as is--but he’s desperate to get off campus and just… be alone. 

So he tells Hunk not to wait up and legs it out of the building as fast as the guard rotation will allow him. The desert is beautiful at sunset, Lance decides. All golds and deep purples and fire spreading from horizon to horizon. He picks a mountain in the distance and starts walking. He has his music. His phone is fully charged. He doesn’t plan to go far, just far enough to find a nice-ish spot to watch the stars and be alone. 

That’s what he needs right now: some quality me time.

He walks and watches the sunset and the stars come out. They are beautiful out here, so much clearer than they ever were when he was a kid. Not even his family’s isolated beach house offered as beautiful a view and that view had made him fall in love with the stars, had convinced him to go out to space. He has to wonder now, hundreds of miles from that skyline and that house, if that was the smartest decision. 

It’s then, walking with his head tilted up and up to stare at the stars while lost in thought and listening to music, that he almost gets run over. 

“What the fuck?” The driver screams as he kills the engine that had almost killed Lance as Lance scrambles onto his knees, the sand digging into his palm. He spins around, sand falling out of his hair to glare at whoever the fuck is driving their stupid hoverbike in the middle of the fucking desert. “What the fuck are you doing out here?”

“...Kogane?” Lance cries, scrambling up and patting his ass to get rid of any sand. “What the fuck are  _ you _ doing here?”

Keith Kogane, resident genius, squints at him. He’s dressed in biker gear. Leather pants and jacket half zipped up over some band tee, helmet tucked under his arm. His hair is wild and his right cheek is smudged slightly with something Lance hopes is car oil (or something like that, he doesn’t get...machines). And judging from the bags under his eyes, Lance has to wonder when is the last time this guy has slept, though that isn’t at the forefront of Lance’s thoughts. Dude looks like he could beat the shit out of Lance for giggles.“...McClain?”

Lance is honestly shocked Kogane remembers him. They’ve never really hung out at the Garrison despite Lance’s best intentions and they’ve only had a few classes together. It makes sense why Lance remembers him, everyone knows Keith Kogane, but why does Kogane know him? Lance doubts he’s done anything particularly noteworthy.

“What are you doing here?” Lance repeats, leaning close to get a better look at the boy. And it’s only this close that he notices the tear marks on his cheeks and the smell of alcohol on his clothes. “Shouldn’t the golden boy be getting his beauty rest...”

Kogane ’s face sours and he jerks away, slamming his helmet back onto his head. “Hey!” Lance cries, running forward so he’s gripping the front handles of the bike, standing in a way he hopes will keep Kogane  from running off. Honestly, he’s better off letting Kogane go, but he’s curious and… and it feels important for some reason. “I asked you a question!”

Kogane glares at him and for a minute Lance honestly thinks he’s going to run him over before he visibly deflates. “You want a ride?” Kogane asks. 

“What?” Lance asks.

“A ride,” Kogane sighs and gestures to the space behind him. 

Lance blinks. Once. Twice. And then takes a deep breath. At this point… why not, right? He looks to his left to see Garrison in the distance before slowly letting go of the bars. He’s not going back. Not yet. He walks to the back of the bike and climbs on. Now… what to do with his hands?

“Hold on!” Keith says as he revs the engine. Lance flails for a moment before sucking it up and wrapping his arms around Keith’s waist. And then they’re gone. The desert ripping past them as Lance finds himself clinging to Keith for dear life. When he feels safe enough to peel his face away from Keith’s shoulder to look up, he watches with bated breath as the stars blur together. He wonders if this is what a comet sees. 

“Where are we going?” Lance yells over the roar of the wind, tightening his grip as Kogane leans to the left.

“You’ll love it!” Kogane screams back, voice carried away by the wind as he moves them towards a tall rock formation in the distance.

Lance takes a deep breath. _ Fuck it.  _

.

In the end, Lance finds himself climbing up a mountain on his break day. “This better be worth it, Kogane!” Lance growls as he lets Kogane help him up over the ledge. 

“It will be,” Kogane promises for the fifth time. “And hey!” he holds up the plastic bag he’s carrying, “At least you can get drunk.”

Which… yeah. Okay. Lance could get behind that. Seventeen and so close to the legal drinking age, Lance is excited to try it. Apparently Kogane is a frequent consumer going by the half bottle of rum he’d pulled out of the trunk of his hover bike. Lance checks his phone. 11PM. He has plenty of time before Hunk starts to worry. 

“This,” Kogane triumphantly spreads his arms out as Lance heaves himself over the last ledge to find himself on top of the plateau, “Is the best view in the desert.”

Lance makes a sort of “oh” sound as he spins, staring up at the stars. This far away from the Garrison, the complete absence of light leaves him the ability to see the stripes in the milky way.

“Worth it, right!” Kogane grins, spreading the blanket Lance had carried up on the ground before falling onto his back. 

Lance walks to the edge and whistles. Nothing but desert and rock. “How did you find this?” he asks, turning back to look at Kogane, propped up on his elbows untwisting the cap of the rum bottle. 

“Not a lot to do when you’re stranded in the desert,” Kogane says simple as that. 

“Speaking of which,” Lance joins Kogane on the blanket, “what are you doing here?”

Kogane passes him the bottle and Lance tips a little bit of it in his mouth. It burns and he fights the urge to cough. No way he’s going to look like a pussy in front of Kogane. Kogane sighs, “Sometimes even the  _ Garrison Golden Boy,”  _ and Lance is not expecting the amount of venom in that phrase, “needs a break?”

Lance nods slowly.  

Kogane raises his hand and stares at his knuckles before chuckling, “What about you?”

“Needed some space,” Lance says as he knocks back another few swallows of rum. He was starting to get used to the taste. Sorta...nutty when you got past the gasoline flavor.

Kogane silently asks for the bottle and Lance passes it back. “Well plenty of space in the desert,” he shrugs, “This place ain’t so bad. I’ve lived in worse.”

Lance frowns, storing that information away for later. He doesn’t really think he has the right to ask if Kogane isn’t going to offer.

“You know Kogane isn’t even my real name,” Ko-Keith tells him around the bottle before letting his hands drop, the bottle nestled in his lap. “I borrowed it to use on my paperwork. I haven’t gotten a chance to see my birth certificate yet.”

Lance doesn’t know what to say so he says, “It suits you.”

“Huh?”

“Your name. ” Lance shrugs, “Lots of hard K sounds. It… um.. It suits you..”

Keith laughs, “Thanks.”

Lance hums and leans back. The milky way looks green right now. For a moment the world is still and then Lance can hear the sound of fabric as Keith lies down next to him, close enough that if Lance were to turn on his side, he wonders if they could… He blinks and frowns. Where did that come from?

Sure, Keith is a good looking guy. And he doubts he’s the only one to harbor an admiration for the guy based on flying skills alone. But he’d never thought about…

“I’m glad I ran into you,” Keith admits.

Lance laughs. “You mean almost rammed into me.” 

Lance laughs harder when Keith playfully smacks him. “So why are you out here?” Keith asks.

Lance frowns, “I told you…”

“No I mean… Why do you want space?”

Lance shrugs, “I…” And he’s feeling weirdly honest right now. He wonders why… 

“I love flying,” Lance says finally. “Like I really love it. There is no better feeling than that control when you’re behind the wheel. But… but I don’t think I’m cut out for the Garrison.” And once he starts Lance finds it hard to stop. “I mean you might not get it because you’re a natural and everyone knows how great you are. I mean, Iverson never lets me fucking forget how much better you are than me.” Lance sits up and turns his head to stare at Keith who is looking up at him with wide eyes. “And it sucks that I’ve got to live up to your name when we all know I can’t. I just…” And Lance sniffles. When had he started crying? God, talk about lame. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry.”

Keith is quiet and Lance sniffles again. “Sorry this is super lame. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

Keith sits up and quietly hands Lance the bottle. Lance takes another deep breath before taking a large gulp. It burns. But at least it’s an excuse for why his eyes start watering again. 

“Don’t chug it,” Keith mumbles taking the bottle back. Lance nods and wipes his face. “So,” Keith says, “I guess that means we’re rivals.”

“Rivals,” Lane mumbles.

“Yeah,” Keith shrugs again before smirking at Lance, “Rivals. Like...Lance and Keith. Neck and neck.”

“Lance and Keith. Neck and neck,” Lance echoes. 

“Like in the old TV shows,” Keith grins, getting excited. “I’m like the war hardened samurai and you’re the young upstart who’s going to like… be my worthy opponent!”

“What?” Lance cries, holding back laughter.

Keith laughs, a blush heavy on his cheeks as he looks away. “ Sorry! I just binged a ton of old anime.” He shrugs again as if to say  _ “whatcha going to do?” _

Lance laughs then, full body chuckles that leaves him holding his stomach as Keith stares at him. Here he’d been thinking Keith Kogane was this cool, mysterious guy and… “Oh my god. You’re a nerd.”

Keith makes sort of squawking noise before pouting, “I’ll have you know people think I’m pretty cool.”

“Probably because they don’t know how much of a nerd you are,” Lance challenges before quickly sobering. “Besides… don’t rivals have to be equals?”

“Well just get into fighter class and get good enough so I can call you my rival,” Keith says as if it’s that simple, that easy. 

“That’s it?” Lance jokes.

“That’s it,” Keith confirms, completely and utterly serious. And well...okay then. What is Lance going to say in the face of that? “Now come on. I’ve got another bottle I want to try and I am determined to get fucking wasted tonight.”

And maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but Lance thinks he can get behind that.

.

As the clock ticks towards 3AM, Keith gives Lance a ride home.

“I had... fun,” Lance tells him as he climbs off the bike. “We should… we should hang out again if you’re around.”

Keith smiles. And it’s just the alcohol talking, but Lance thinks Keith’s smile is the most beautiful thing he’s seen all night. “I’d love to.”

.  

The next time they meet isn’t until a few months later. Lance has been meaning to; if nothing else than to just thank Keith. Plus now… he’d heard about the Kerberos mission. Everyone knew how close Shirogane and Keith were. 

He spots him in the hall right before diner. It’s not hard. He’s the only one moving away from the crowd. 

“I’ll be right back,” Lance mumbles quickly, cutting into Hunk and Aaron’s heated debate on something to do with machines and science and things far too complicated for Lance. He doesn’t stick around to hear their reply. 

“Hey, Keith!” Lance calls out as he watches the other boy pause at the stop light. He’s carrying a backpack and a suitcase. His helmet hanging off one of the straps. 

Keith turns and shakes one of his earbuds out of his ear. When he sees Lance, he squints and Lance realizes he looks the same as that night: sleep deprived and intimidating. And he has tears on his cheeks. “...McClain?”

And it’s the use of his last name that stops him short because… Well because they’d moved past that hadn’t they? Somewhere between Keith’s stories of stealing candy from his favorite foster brother and Lance’s retelling of how he met Hunk, they’d fallen into a first name basis. Hadn’t they? “Hey!” Lance repeats. “How’ve you been?”

Keith frowns and then shrugs. He looks uncomfortable. He refuses to meet Lance’s eyes. “Good” he shrugs, looking anywhere but Lance. “Can I help you?”

“Help me?” Lance echoes, confused. What did… why? “Um… No. I was just… I heard about Shirogane and I wanted to-”

Lance gets whiplash from how sudden the mood changes. “I don’t need your fucking pity. ” Keith jabs a finger into Lance’s chest and levels him with a glare.

“I…” Lance stammers, taking a step back. “I wasn’t. I mean…”

“You don’t have the goddamn right. What do you know? You’re just a fucking cargo pilot.” Keith snarls. “What do you know about Shi-Shiro?”

It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. Later, Lance will realize he hadn’t know what he was talking about. Later, Lance would realize he’d made a mistake. It’d take a year and far too many near death experiences trapped on the other side of the universe with only Keith’s voice in his ear for comfort for him to realize he’d been wrong about everything Keith Kogane. But for now, in that moment, the only thing Lance understood was that this isn’t how he wanted this to go. 

“Fuck you, Kogane,” Lance snaps back. It’s easy to turn around and walk away. Easy to ignore the startled noise behind him and easy to keep his anger going. 

He’s always been the type to hold grudges. Call it a character flaw. Keith wanted a rival right? Well fucking fine then. He’ll give him a rival. And if his heart hurts a little then it doesn’t matter. 

(Stupid boys with their stupid, stupid mullets and their stupid hoverbikes and their god awful nerdy smiles.)

(It would only be later that Lance would remember the bags at Keith’s feet. It wouldn’t be until later that Lance would realize that was the day Keith was expelled from the Garrison.) 

...

It takes two more months for Lance to wake up. Keith is finishing up a diplomatic meeting with Hunk.

They get the call half-way through negotiations. It takes everything he has not to bolt. These people have ample access to Qui’tel, the best mineral to conduct raw quintessence. They need it. 

And if Keith has to repeat that to himself over and over again just to make sure he stays put and doesn’t bolt for Red, well, no one needs to know. 

The only bonus is Hunk is just as impatient to get back as Keith is and has no problem with skipping out on the usual celebratory post-signing party and booking it as fast as they can. “What do you think did it?” Hunk asks as they speed walk as fast as they can without looking suspicious. Politics, what you going to do?

“Maybe we can try and be positive and say it’s because it was just his time and not because the machine broke again or because he has irreversible brain damage and the machine has just stopped trying to fix him,” Keith says, far too fast and far too nervous.

“Wow, thanks,” Hunk jokes. “Remind me to never go to you for a pick-me-up, ever.”

Keith laughs and tries not to worry if it sounded as hysterical as he feels. As he takes the pilot seat, he wonders if they would have been better off taking yellow. He would honestly prefer to pace. As is, he lets his leg bounce as they break through the atmosphere and gun it home. 

“He’s going to be okay,” Keith finally says as they move into position to enter the wormhole. He hears Red quietly purr in the back of his mind, a quiet reassurance. “And I’m going to kill him for making me worry so much.”

“Only after I hug him,” Hunk reminds him.

“Right. And Pidge says she gets to punch him, right,” Keith laughs. The wormhole is here. They’re going to see Lance. His hands shake as he moves Red forward. He’s here. He’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. 

After three months even Keith had started to lose hope…

Red barely has the time to lower the ramp all the way before Keith is off, running as fast as he can in these stiff, formal clothes. Hunk not far off, his own heavy footfalls perfectly in time with Keith’s. They check the medbay first and are surprised to see it empty. 

“Kitchen?” Hunk suggests. “Or his room?”

Keith bites his lip as he rocks back and forth. He’s about to suggest they split up when Coran pops around the corner. 

“There you boys are.” He’s smiling. There are tears in the corners of his eyes, but Coran is also smiling. That has to mean something, right? Right? “He’s in the living room.”

Keith can admit slamming the door open was a bit much, but he doesn’t have the time to be embarrassed before Hunk is pushing past him to the couch. 

“Lance!” Hunk cries, reaching out and pulling Lance into his arms for a hug that had Keith wincing in sympathy. “Oh my god, you’re here. You’re… you’re breathing. You have all your limbs and fingers and… and…”

Shiro quietly pulls Keith into the room. Keith starts crying. He touches his cheek and feels tears and can’t stop a soft, surprised noise from escaping his mouth. “He’s going to be okay,” Shiro whispers so his voice doesn’t carry over the sound of Hunk and Pidge arguing who gets to hug Lance for longer. 

Keith nods. “What’s wrong?”

“Speaking is… a little hard right now. But he’s going to be okay.” Shiro reassures him. “Coran is predicting a full recovery.”

Keith steps forward and pulls Lance out of Pidge’s grip with a surprising amount of ease. “If you ever do that again,” Keith says into the fabric of Lance’s shirt as he holds him close. “I am going to kill you.”

Lance hums gently and pets his hair. He’s in love with this boy, Keith thinks. In love with the first boy who made his heart beat too fast, who helped him understand who he is all those years ago. Lance, Keith realizes, has been such an integral part of his life story without even knowing it and now here he is. Keith never wants to let him go. 

Which… of course is impossible. It isn’t long until Allura arrives demanding her own hugs. Apparently Hunk and Keith’s quick departure from the party had raised a few eyebrows. But it is still with great reluctance that Keith lets Lance go. He takes a deep breath as he steps back. There is a moment when Lance pauses to catch Keith’s eye.

They’re going to be okay, Keith decides. Not today. Not tomorrow. But one day. And when that day comes, Keith is going to tell him he loves him. But until then this is enough. Keith can wait. 

He’ll wait for as long as he needs to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND WE'RE DONE! Thank you everyone who stuck with this story! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did writing it! This is honestly one of my favorite voltron fanfics I have ever written and I can’t believe it’s finally done! Well… sorta done. SURPRISE! I have a Lance-centric, Lance POV sequel planned for this baby but I need to watch Season 3!
> 
> In the meantime, please let me know what you think! Your comments fuel me. 
> 
>  
> 
> Shoutout to my beta,[ Onoheiwa ](https://onoheiwa.tumblr.com/)  
> Art by [ Aetherlogic! ](http://aetherlogic.tumblr.com/post/163634543386/yooo-art-i-did-for-my-good-momfriends-update-for)
> 
> Both are wonderful and amazing! Please go give them all the love. Thank you!
> 
>  
> 
> More Notes:
> 
> If you like what I do please support me on my writing tumbr![ TheQueen117!](https://thequeen117.tumblr.com/) [ Also this story has a tumblr post if you'd like to share it! ](https://thequeen117.tumblr.com/post/163644646185/)
> 
> Also! Remember that Lance Zine I mentioned last chapter? We've opened pre-orders until August 22nd!! Please consider checking us out and sharing or buying if you like what you see! [ LanceZine ](https://lancezine.tumblr.com/post/163549898219/lancezine-preorders-for-starboy-an-unofficial).
> 
> Love you guys! <3


End file.
